


Crawl Home

by SJtrinity



Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, I Don't Even Know, M/M, another hozier lyric for the title because don't fix what ain't broke, farming as a metaphor for stuff, i only know how to write one thing: sap, sequelae of injuries, work as a metaphor for the same stuff, you know what divergence i mean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:56:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 28,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24374638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SJtrinity/pseuds/SJtrinity
Summary: Andy tapped his pen against the sheet of paper before him, staring at the blank white space. He could fill it up with enough words to rival the good book itself, but they wouldn't be sufficient to express what he wanted to say. He saw him again, his long frame pressed flat and lifeless against the stretcher. His torn and blood soaked shirt, his pale face. He threw down the pen, rose and went to his closet door.
Relationships: Andrew A. "Ack-Ack" Haldane/Edward "Hillbilly" Jones
Comments: 13
Kudos: 39





	1. Chapter 1

Andy didn't know what to make of it, when his mother opened his door and set his Silver Star in his lap. He traced a finger along its embossed wreath and looked up at her questioningly, but she only smiled and ran a gentle hand through his hair. She left the room as quietly and neatly as she had entered, and Andy looked back down at the medal.  
What was her intent? To remind him of what he had once accomplished? That hadn't been an accomplishment, all he had managed was to survive the night. God, that scant hour, blacker than pitch, had stretched on and on. Andy remembered crawling back and forth between his men, trying to make some sort of connection with just his hands and his voice, trying to keep them from breaking. The Japanese charged their barely held position five times, and each time they did Andy groped blindly in the dark until he found Eddie's arm or shoulder, orienting himself by his body, the man was more reliable than any lodestone, and directed fire more by sound than sight. For all that horror, the lull between the charges had been worse, each one seeming to last a lifetime. But those still hadn't been the longest moments of his life.   
He set the medal on the windowsill and stood, turning in a slow circle and surveying his room. He took his time, tried to lock in everything he saw. Then he closed his eyes, started listing items out loud. He started with the shelves, then moved on to his desk. He was improving, or thought he was at least. When he'd first returned home, he could stare at an object for what felt like hours, struggling fruitlessly to put a name to it. It was even more shameful when it happened with people, when he looked into a familiar face and remembered how he knew them, who they were to him, but couldn't for the life of him recall their name. But he was improving. He had to believe that he was improving.  
For reasons he couldn't understand, he didn't seem to have that problem when it came to remembering the faces and names of the men he'd served with. He could close his eyes and name them all, see them as clearly as if he were still back there with them. He started listing them next, trying to move in order of when and how he'd met them, forward on from Quantico. For reasons he understood far too well, he named Eddie over and over again. Sergeant Jones, then Hillbilly, then Lieutenant Jones. Then Eddie, although only in Andy's thoughts.  
It was because he'd fallen slowly into knowing him, his countless shaded layers, until the man was as necessary as breath or sustenance but still only half understood. They had been in Melbourne when he'd had his first glimmering of the truth, the burgeoning notion that there was more to Eddie than he could ever uncover.  
Andy had been monitoring the amount he drank, but there was only so much any man could do in the face of endless beer and goodwill. The cricket ground was packed with marines and soldiers from Australia's 9th, everyone reveling in the breakdown of tensions between the two groups. He was starting to feel the effects, the faint foggy warmth that told a man he'd had just the right amount, although few heeded the feeling, and Andy couldn't claim any difference. He was chatting pleasantly with some fellow officers when he happened to look over and see Hillbilly, standing in the beer line, his foot tapping along to the raucous music rolling out from the hastily erected stage. Andy excused himself, tossing back the last of his cup and moving to join him.  
"Sergeant Jones." He leaned in and made a show of inspecting his collar. "Or is it Lieutenant now?" Hillbilly's lip curled up in a sharp smile.  
"Not yet, Sir. The skipper's given me to understand it'll be coming through soon." He had a way of looking a man square in the eye, an intent gaze that never felt heavy. "Thank you again for putting in that request, Sir. It's not something I'm likely to forget."  
"One thank you was sufficient, Hillbilly, really." He was just pleased the man had finally accepted it. Andy nudged him with his elbow. "I'll have to start avoiding your company if you insist on repeating yourself." Jones slanted him an odd, sideways glance, gave a short laugh.  
"Not my intention, Sir." He glanced around the beer party. "Seems like relations have been repaired."  
"Hmm. Were you caught up in any of the brawling?" Andy surveyed the sea of hats spread out in front of them as they neared the makeshift bar. Hillbilly's own cap was set perfectly askew on his head, his curls twisting out wildly around its edges.   
"No," he answered with a snort. "I had my fill with that sort of foolhardiness years ago. I stayed in, had a nice warm meal with the family I've been put up with." Andy found himself enjoying the pitch of his voice, its checkered intonation. He was, perhaps, a bit drunk. "Heard it though. Scared their daughter some, I ended up sitting in the parlor with her for a time until things settled."  
Andy chuckled. "Losing your heart? It seems to be going around." They had only been in Melbourne for a few months, but the romances were already flourishing. Half his men were sunk in love, or lust masquerading as love, with a warmhearted local girl. He hadn't expected it of Jones. He'd suspected quite the opposite, in fact.  
"The lady's sweet," Hillbilly said agreeably. "But she's not to my taste." He looked over at Andy, gave him a crooked grin. "She's thirteen." Andy laughed at that, shaking his head and silently marveling at the creeping relief he felt at Hillbilly's words. They shared an amused glance, and Andy watched Hillbilly's eyes heighten with something, watched him drop his gaze. It was a certainty.  
They didn't speak to each other as they got their beers, exchanging friendly banter with the marines doling out the drinks instead. Andy hardly knew what was said, all his focus turned inward. After all, when would he have another opportunity like this? Hillbilly was an officer like himself, and belonged to a different company besides. There was nothing standing in the way in that regard. More importantly, Andy liked and respected him. He had yet to meet a marine to equal Jones in levelheaded grit, that unique combination of daring and steadiness that distinguished him. And attraction, well. Andy watched Hillbilly as they walked away with their beers, the cup sweating and cold against his hand. He liked that Jones was taller than him, leaner. He liked the thought of pulling sweat from his pores with the effort and heat of their dragging flesh, that sweet work.  
"Hillbilly," he said, leaning in close, the music loud enough to excuse the breach. He let his free hand graze along the side of his hip, felt the sharp jut of bone. "Would you be interested in finding a quieter spot? With me?" Jones frowned, looked sharply around them.   
"All due respect, Sir," he said, turning his bright blue gaze back to Andy. "But I ain't that grateful."  
It took Andy a moment to understand what he meant. "No, of course not," he said quickly, stepping back. "I didn't mean to imply, that is," he stopped, collected himself. "My apologies, Sergeant. I'll leave you to it." He managed to smile, hold his eyes. "Enjoy the party."  
"Thank you, Sir," Hillbilly replied evenly. It was Andy who dropped his gaze, turning away and moving through the crowd as swiftly as he could without shoving up against any of the men. He found himself struggling against a strange urge to laugh, at himself, at his error. Some things had come to him all too easily, up to this point. He hadn't ever made an offer and been refused before. Most of the offers had come to him. There was a lesson in humility to be found in there somewhere, but he was too syrupy with drink to chase the thought down. Instead he retreated to the edge of the cricket ground, sipped his beer and nodded to the friendly greetings that came his way and tried his damnedest not to watch Hillbilly. But he still saw him, saw him settle down into the grass with a mix of soldiers from either side, hooking a long arm over his knee and watching the entertainment. And he saw him, a few hours later, leaving with an Australian soldier, the two of them walking a careful distance apart. Andy did laugh at that, crossing his arms and shaking his head at the irony. To have been so right, and so completely wrong. Those last hours spent at the beer party had slid by at a snail's pace; mortification had a way of drawing time out into endless loops. But those weren't the longest minutes of Andy's life, either.  
Andy sat down at his desk and started working on another letter. Writing was a laborious task for him these days as well. He had to think long and carefully over what he wanted to communicate, and then put it to paper immediately before it left him. It was May now, the weather briefly perfect. Andy had been home for six months. Six months, six letters. He told himself he would give it an even dozen, and if he didn't receive a reply after a year he would give it up. It should be enough, just knowing that he was alive. That had been the first letter Andy had written, and he had received a reply quickly enough. After all, it was right and good that a captain ask after the welfare of his XO. Lieutenant Jones had indeed made it home, and had been honorably discharged to the care of his family, whose address was provided for Andy's convenience. It didn't say anything about the state he was discharged in, that was left to Andy to twist over. He couldn't imagine why Eddie hadn't replied to any of his letters; they had been friends, after all, if that light term could even begin to capture the bond that had existed between them. It had remained unspoken, but neither of them had turned away or denied it. But perhaps there was no place for a friendship like that here at home. Perhaps Eddie was answering him with each month that passed. He had always said more with careful silence and a quick glance than he ever had with words. But Andy finished the letter anyway, just a few sentences, he was likely to give himself a splitting headache if he pushed himself too much. He folded it away in an envelope, wrote both their addresses on the front, and walked downstairs to post it.   
Summer laid its heavy hand down on the town, and Andy continued to test himself. He began running errands on his parent's behalf, asking them to describe what they needed him to do and writing down what they said. It was like his mind had become fixed and inflexible, but all that meant was that he needed to train it to bend again, the same as he would any other muscle. Or so he told himself. People beamed when they saw him coming, that or spoke to him far too gently and slowly. Andy knew they no longer saw him, really. They saw his injury, or a decorated marine captain. Regardless, he was no longer a whole person to them, but a representation of something else.   
He mailed two more letters, June and July. He started to turn his thoughts to what he might do next, towards an occupation. They would take him back at Bowdoin if he asked, on the merit of his service and his history with the college. They would stick him in a little office and give him light, harmless work. Or he could easily get a job at the textile mill his father still worked at. He could handle that, fix his mind on the task in front of him and keep his focus there. He had to find something, he didn't intend on sleeping in his childhood bed the remainder of his life. But he waited.  
In August the war ended and Andy sent another letter. They were becoming longer as he grew more assured in his ability to hold a thought. He started to write more carelessly, under the growing confidence that Eddie was not going to answer him. Only three more letters, and he would have to accept that it was over and done.   
But not even a week after he sent out his ninth letter, he received a reply.  
He had been taking breakfast with his father, discussing the newspaper, another daily chore he had set himself, when his mother walked in and handed him a large manila envelope. Andy saw the return address, with a singular 'Jones' provided as the sender. He opened the packet, amazed at the steadiness of his hands, and dumped his own letters out onto his lap. He counted them carefully, they were all there, save the one he'd just mailed a few days prior. They hadn't been opened. A heavy curtain started closing in, narrowing his vision, and then Andy gave the manila envelope one last aggrieved shake, and a single sheet of lined paper slid out. He grabbed it, forced his fingers not to clutch, not to mar whatever might be written there. He looked up to find his parents watching him.   
"Excuse me," he said, rising from his seat and gathering the packet of letters in his hands. He retreated to his room and sat down at his desk, turning the letter over slowly. He forced himself to not skim its contents, but start at the beginning and read slowly.  
_Captain Haldane,_  
_I am returning the letters you have posted to my brother, with apologies. We have not lived at the address you have been writing for nearly a year now. I happened to stop by the old home to pick up some items left behind, and discovered your letters sitting in our box._  
_My brother returned home to us in December, but he did not stay long. He's purchased a little land for himself down in West Virginia and has been living there since the cold broke. He writes me regularly and is in good health and spirit. I thought at first to forward your letters to him, but decided it best to return them to you._  
_Captain Haldane, I want to thank you for all that you did for my brother while he was fighting over there. Eddie doesn't care to speak much on the war, but he told us stories of some of the men he served with, and you most of all. I'm sure my brother would not have returned home to us if not for the care you took for him._  
_I have enclosed the name and location of the post office Eddie receives mail through. Should you wish to write to him, I've no doubt he would be happy to receive it._  
_With sincere gratitude,_  
_May Jones_  
Eddie had never been one to go on about himself, but he had also never been one to avoid a question directly asked, and so Andy knew a little about his family, his spitfire sister. Eddie had described her as five flat feet of tempered steel, and judging from the heavy impressions her pencil made on the paper, Andy was inclined to agree. She had written the letter with care, erasing and replacing words until she had said exactly what she meant to say. If she was standing in front of him right now, he might have kissed her. He pulled out a fresh sheet of paper, reached for his pen, but stopped, looking down at the name of the town that May had provided him. Eddie's home.  
The longest moments of Andy's life had been spent behind an abbreviated line of snaggled rock on Peleliu. It was only by the grace of God he hadn't received his head wound then instead of two days later, the way he stood and watched his men struggle with the stretcher, his heart in his throat. Some distant part of him was shouting, ordering a retreat, but all the rest was roaring _Eddie, Eddie, Eddie_. Then he saw the man in front stumble, the stretcher tilt. He saw Eddie get hit, hit again, the way the blood sluiced up. That was when time slowed to the point where he could track every one of his racing thoughts in the span of a footfall, where he recalled every word they'd ever spoken to each other in the length of time it took for Eddie's hand to rise in the air, and then fall to his side, limp.   
When, what felt like years later, the boys had stumbled around the other side of the rock and dropped the stretcher, he had been certain that Eddie was dead. He wasn't moving, didn't seem to be breathing. Andy had hovered over him, fought not to touch him, clear his sharp, dear features of the coating of ashen debris they were covered with, and then a corpsman was shoving him out of the way, shouting for hands to help him with the stretcher. Andy had watched them go, and then turned back to his men.   
That night, when he finally found his way to his hole and collapsed back against the dirt, he hadn't allowed himself to dwell on the fact that Eddie would not be sleeping beside him, would not be waking him with a brief hand to his knee in four hours' time. He didn't allow himself to think of him at all. If he thought about him he might weep, and if he wept he might not be able to stop, and that he couldn't allow. They were pressing forward again come first light.   
Andy tapped his pen against the sheet of paper before him, staring at the blank white space. He could fill it up with enough words to rival the good book itself, but they wouldn't be sufficient to express what he wanted to say. He saw him again, his long frame pressed flat and lifeless against the stretcher. His torn and blood soaked shirt, his pale face. He threw down the pen, rose and went to his closet door.

* * *

  
Eddie heard the car bumping its way up towards his house before he saw it. It annoyed him, mostly. What in the hell was the point of having a dirt track for a road if fools still chose to force their cars up its shitty length to reach his door? But he kicked his feet down from where they had been settled along the top of the porch rail and stood from his seat, curious despite himself.   
He frowned when he saw the car, far too new and well kept to belong to any of the locals. Folk around here drove ten year old trucks or their tractors, if they drove at all. A car this nice only meant bad news of some sort. But there wasn't any reason for revenuers to be coming to his door, he owned the land outright and was all paid up on the property. The rooster crowed from his pen on the other side of the porch, a harsh challenge that set the hens to cooing and fluttering. "Hush," Eddie said over his shoulder, not looking away from the car. "Ain't no one bothering you yet." He didn't know if he was speaking to himself or the rooster.   
The car rumbled to a stop and the noise of the engine dropped away as the driver turned it off. The track up to the house came in from the west, and the sun had started slipping away behind the trees an hour ago, so Eddie wasn't able to make out the driver's features well from where he stood on his porch. He watched as the door opened and a man stepped out, straight shoulders, a faint smile. A body that settled naturally into whatever landscape it found itself in. Haldane had always had that way about him, as comfortable and easy laying in a pit of mud as he was dancing under crystal fixtures in dress blues.  
"Hello, Hillbilly," he said, standing behind the door of his car, one hand settled along the top. His voice was just the same, quiet and low.  
"Sir," Eddie near stuttered. He had been leaning against the post, but straightened as soon as he realized that it was Ack-Ack. Haldane closed the car door and walked slowly towards him, until he was standing at the bottom of his porch steps. He craned his neck back to take in the house, exposing the strong line of his throat. He was wearing a knit vest over a white collared shirt.   
"You've found yourself a beautiful spot here," he said, looking back at Eddie. "It's almost overwhelming."  
That was one word for it. Eddie took the three steps down off his porch, tugged forward by a wrenching confusion of feeling and long habit. Where the hell else was he supposed to stand, except next to Ack-Ack? "Skipper," he said, and even as he spoke he was reaching out, helpless, his arms going around him. Haldane went still for a moment, then returned the embrace. He was warm, his hold tight. They were alive, alive. Eddie felt an embarrassing sting of tears and blinked furiously to clear them, glaring in agitation at Haldane's car until the feeling went away. He felt Haldane's chin dip briefly down and settle against his shoulder, and then they were both pulling back. Eddie couldn't help the bewildered smile that he knew was near to splitting his face in two. "Damn it. It's that good to see you, Sir."  
"You too, Eddie. I didn't know," Haldane cut himself off, oddly diffident. It was a rare thing for him to hesitate over his words, even more so for him to look so openly uncertain. Eddie stood and waited, and Haldane eventually sighed and set a hand on his shoulder, a comfortingly familiar gesture. "I've driven twelve hours to deliver a lecture, I'm afraid." There he was, amused eyes and a small smile.  
"What about, Sir?" Eddie asked, game.  
"The importance of keeping an updated record with the Corps, Lieutenant. I've apparently been writing an old address since Christmas." His smile flashed at Eddie's dismayed look, and he gave his shoulder a squeeze. "But I'll save it. I'm just relieved to find you well and whole."  
So that was what this was about. Eddie clasped his hands behind his back, feeling more steady now that he had an idea what was going on. "That I am. You look the same. I tried to write you once, when I was still in the hospital. Got a letter back that you'd been wounded and sent home." Whatever it was, it was able to be hidden away beneath his clothing. He still had his limbs, wasn't disfigured as far as Eddie could tell. But Eddie sure as hell wasn't going to pull up his shirt and show his own, and couldn't expect Ack-Ack to feel any differently.   
"Yes. I'm sure you won't be flattered to hear it, but it turned out I couldn't get by very well without you." His eyes were smiling, but his tone was somber. "I only made it two days on my own."  
"Nothing to do with me, Skipper. It was Bloody Nose. Got the best of us both."  
"It did," Haldane said, looking away. He spoke with a quiet, honest pain that had Eddie mentally fumbling, reassessing. There was something else, something he wasn't seeing.  
"You bring anything with you?" He asked. Haldane looked back over at him, quizzical. Eddie gestured at him. "Don't suppose you're planning on sleeping in this spiffy get up."  
"I have my suitcase," Ack-Ack answered after a strangely long pause. Eddie moved around him and opened his car door. He could feel his eyes on him as he pulled his case from the back seat.  
"What'd you think, Captain? Think I'm gonna send you off after a two minute conversation? Anyways, there ain't any hotels around here. C'mon." He closed the car up and made for the house, heard Ack-Ack following after him.  
It was dark in the house, orange light coming in only faintly from his one western window. Eddie closed the door behind Haldane and went to turn the wick on the lamp sitting on the mantle. "Have a seat if you like," he said, gesturing towards the furniture. "I'll take this on up." He moved quick across the room, took the stairs to the loft two at a time. It seemed important for some reason that he not leave Ack-Ack alone for too long. He set the suitcase at the foot of the bed and forced himself to make his way back down at a more sedate pace. He found him standing in the kitchen, looking the space over with that deliberate gaze of his. "Want some coffee?" Eddie asked. Lord, he'd let the oven fire go out hours ago. "Got some rye around here somewhere if you feel like something stronger."  
"I'm famished, to be honest," Haldane said apologetically. Eddie went to the ice box and peered inside.  
"Got some cold stew. Slice of chess pie I picked up last time I went into town." He looked back at Ack-Ack.  
"Hmm," he said, mouth pulling down in a smile. Eddie grinned and grabbed them both.  
They sat at the table, the kerosene lamp between them, and Eddie watched Ack-Ack eat in its warm light with unabashed pleasure. It was good to see him eating something other than slop out of a can or the tasteless chow they got when off rotation. Ack-Ack took a bite of the stew and paused, his brow lifting up.  
"Did you make this?"  
"Yes, Sir."  
"It's edible," Ack-Ack said neutrally, his eyes warm. Eddie huffed a laugh and leaned back in his seat. "How have you been, Eddie? How'd you find your way back to West Virginia?"  
Eddie had grown accustomed long ago to Haldane's sincere interest in his childhood, his life stateside. There was nothing unique in it; the skipper was that way with all his men, genuinely invested in their lives beyond the scope of war. What he wasn't used to was this new easy way of saying his name, like they were friends from before that time. Like they hadn't met on a boat on their way to Guadalcanal, surrounded by the heat and stink of nervous marines, the war already closing its fist around them both.   
"I was just looking for some quiet." It had been a spur of the moment decision. He'd always remembered the handful of years his family had lived in West Virginia fondly, and it had been the first place to come to mind when he decided he needed a change. He thought about leaving it at that, but he'd never been able to be anything but honest with Ack-Ack. "Shook me up, coming home, seeing folk I'd known for years stare at me like something shining through a windowpane. I couldn't cut it." It would have been impossible to say to anyone other than Ack-Ack. "People around here only know what I choose to tell them. It's cowardly, I know."  
"Not at all," Haldane murmured. "I know the feeling."  
"Needed a break from it?" Maybe that was why he was here. Haldane was the kind of marine they put on posters and paraded around the country. Eddie could only imagine the fuss his hometown had been kicking up for him. Ack-Ack shook his head around a forkful of pie.  
"No." His gaze was steady. "I just wanted to see you." Lord, why'd he have to go and say that? Eddie dropped his eyes against the clenching feeling in his stomach. Damn it.   
"I'm glad to see you too, Skip," he said, looking down at the table. He didn't know what else he could say. He couldn't tell him how he'd been half-mad on the hospital ship, driven to the reaches of his mind by the drugs and the incredible pain and the thought of Ack-Ack and the rest of the company struggling on without him, the distance between them growing every day. He couldn't tell him how he'd all but collapsed in the middle of the goods store a few weeks back, when he happened to make a trip into town, and found out that the war had ended. He'd leaned against a bin of dried beans and thought about Haldane, tried to imagine what little thing he might have said to set him straight, have the world making sense again. Now he was here, and it made even less sense than it had before. He looked back up at him. He was watching him with that quiet gaze of his.  
"Where'd you go, Hillbilly?" He asked gently. Eddie shrugged and shook his head, and Haldane's eyes drifted over his shoulder. "I suppose I can imagine the general area. It's unnerving, isn't it? The quiet we live in now. I don't mean actual quiet, of course." He leaned slowly back in his seat, crossing his arms against his chest. "We had the time and the impetus to think very painstakingly over a great number of things, over there. That's what I mean. All the realizations that seemed to fall on us, large and small. And now we're home and there's only this," he lifted a hand and gestured towards himself. "This vacuum." He frowned suddenly and touched the side of his head, then lowered his hand and looked over at him. Eddie stared back, trying to understand, trying to get a bead on him. "Or maybe I'm just tired," he said with a rueful smile.  
"It's getting late," Eddie said, although it wasn't. The sun had gone down an hour ago at most. He grabbed the dishes and stood, crossing the kitchen to dump them in the sink. "Suppose we should both turn in. You'll take the loft."  
"I don't intend to turn you out of your own bed," Haldane said, rising to his feet.  
"You ain't sleeping on the couch, Sir, and that's the end of it," Eddie said firmly. He came back to the table and picked up the lantern, holding it out to Haldane until he accepted it. It was a tactic he took with him only rarely, coming at him sidewise and telling him what to do, and only when the man had run himself so ragged he was fit to drop. Ack-Ack had a way of growing colorless when he was nearing his limits, stiff jokes and smiles, the gentle manner that covered his inner oaken strength slipping away in stages. He responded now the way he had then, with a self-deprecating chuckle and a warm, firm hand on Eddie's arm.   
"Alright, Hillbilly." He turned and made his way towards the stairs and Eddie trailed after him, lingering at the bottom of the steps and waiting until Haldane disappeared on the other side of the rail. He propped his elbow along the sloping banister and watched the lamp's light flicker along the wall as Haldane moved about the room. "Standing first watch, Lieutenant?" Haldane's voice floated down to him, laced with wry amusement.  
"No, Sir," Eddie answered, grinning. He moved away from the steps and stretched himself out on his couch. He listened to the creak of Ack-Ack's footsteps over his head, listened to him settle into his bed. The thought of him there shouldn't hit him so low and humming in his stomach, shouldn't pull at him like it did. But he'd always been a fool when it came to Andrew Haldane.  
Eddie had trained himself years ago to not let his eyes linger on a likely looking man, to skim quickly and not look again. But he'd developed a weakness for watching Ack-Ack early on, long before he joined K Company. The man looked like he'd stepped down off a marble pedestal, who the hell wouldn't take another look? Eddie remembered their conversation at that beer party in Melbourne with a familiar shiver of lust. Ack-Ack had surprised him; Eddie hadn't suspected before that moment that the two of them might have similar inclinations. But Haldane had been working his way over to soused, and Eddie didn't shit where he ate. He was never certain, afterwards, if it had simply been the drink talking, or if Haldane had actually meant it. They certainly never spoke of it again; the next time they saw each other was at a swank officer's party after Eddie's commission came through. Haldane had smiled and clapped him on the shoulder, asked a few polite questions and then moved on. A couple months later Eddie had been transferred to K Company, and was relieved he hadn't been so foolish as to say yes, that Haldane seemed to have forgotten the whole exchange.  
Kostecki, Haldane's XO, took a bullet their fourth day on Gloucester, and Eddie hadn't known how to react when Ack-Ack informed him the next morning that he would be taking Kostecki's place. He hadn't wanted to accept. His place was with the boys; it was why he had tried to refuse his commission when they first offered it to him. But just like then, he knew he couldn't really refuse. And it had turned out to be a good fit. Most days Eddie thought it was what God had put him on this earth for, to be Ack-Ack's right hand through those dark days. To look after him.  
That had been his real purpose. Sure, he bellowed out orders on Haldane's behalf; the captain should only have to say a thing once to have it done, and it was Eddie's job to make sure he didn't ever have call to repeat himself. Sure, he looked after the boys as he could, keeping them square when they were on rotation and trying to bring them a little joy when they were off. But looking after Haldane was what really mattered. The skipper shouldn't need to ask for anything, because it was Eddie's job to know it before he did. After all, he couldn't ask: he was the captain. He could only order, command. But some things a man needed to be given. So Eddie brought him coffee when he was struggling over a letter to the family of a fallen marine, sat beside him and traded stories about the boy until Haldane knew what to write. He made sure he ate, made sure he took some time for himself. The way Eddie saw it, Ack-Ack was the best man in the world, and if he had some small part of helping him bear up under his heavy load, then that was a life with some meaning.  
He was obviously struggling under something now. Eddie hadn't figured out what it was yet, but he would. And once he knew, he'd make sure Haldane got whatever he needed. He'd get him steadied up and send him back out into the world. Ack-Ack deserved the world, and the world needed more men like him.

* * *

  
Andy woke up to a hoarse, warbling shriek sounding faintly through his window. He opened his eyes and stared in confusion at the slanted ceiling only a few feet above his head, the wide wooden beams cutting across. He turned his head, squinting against the light, and saw a long set of windows, cut in a triangular pattern to fit against the roof's incline. Ah, yes. He was at Eddie's, and that noise, what had that noise been? He heard it again, a loud, grating crow. A rooster.   
He sat up slowly, mindful of his head, which could ache awfully in the morning, and had been nearly debilitating the night before, but there was nothing, the pain gone as if it had never been. He stood carefully, unable to straighten to his full height unless he stood in the exact center of the loft, and if he did that he had to duck to avoid the beams. He smiled at the thought of Eddie navigating the space, but it was large enough for a wide, comfortable bed, so he supposed it was sufficient to its purpose. And it was undeniably charming, tucked away above the rest of the house, the room filling slowly with morning light.  
He dressed in slacks and a simple cotton shirt, then made his way downstairs. Eddie was nowhere to be found, and Andy took the time to look more closely around the house now that he could see it clearly. It was small, and militantly neat. The stairs leading to the loft bisected the space, one half the kitchen, the other half given over to a couch and armchair set around the fireplace. That was the house in its entirety. Andy wandered over to the kitchen sink, saw that Eddie had already washed the dishes from the night before and stacked them in the open cupboard. There was a small tin cup sitting on the end holding his toothbrush, a razor and a bar of soap beside it. Andy inspected the oven, the ice box. He hadn't imagined it: the house had no plumbing or electricity. _Eddie_ , he thought fondly, shaking his head.  
Eddie had lit a fire in the oven, and there was a percolator sitting on the stovetop, giving off the smell of hot coffee. Andy helped himself to a mug, then went out the door. The land fell gently away from the house, and there was a garden of some sort growing along the southern slope. Chickens were wandering the space between, clucking softly as they paced. Andy stepped down off the porch and came face to face with a large rooster. He stopped, admiring its long, silky brown feathers, and it tilted its head, made a low coughing sound, and charged him. He blinked, startled, then raised a hesitant foot, torn between astonishment and laughter as it attacked his shoe.   
"Hey!" Andy looked up in time to see Eddie rising to his feet from the garden, a metal bucket in one hand. "Quit that, damn it." He strolled across the yard towards Andy and the furious rooster, and the wise creature cut its losses and took off with an outraged shake of its feathers, returning to the dithering hens and leading them away. "Next time just get your hands on his neck and back and hold him down, Sir," Eddie said, coming to stand by him and scowling after the rooster. "You put his beak in the dirt a few times and he'll learn to steer clear of you."  
"Not so different from us, are they?" Andy commented, amused. He inspected his shoe, then took a sip of coffee and looked over at Eddie. "So. You keep chickens and grow vegetables these days."  
"Eh. Just limits the trips I gotta make into town." Eddie glanced back towards the garden. "Give me a minute and I can fix us up some breakfast."  
"I'm not here for you to wait on me, Eddie," Andy chided. "I'd like to help." Eddie eyed him uneasily. "I know I'm just as green to this as I was on the Canal, but I'm sure I'll fumble through somehow." He nudged him gently. "The same as then."  
"Hopefully not quite the same, Sir." Eddie frowned thoughtfully, looking back and forth between Andy and the garden. "Alright." He handed Andy the bucket. "Pick any of the beans and peppers that look ripe and leave the rest. Then you can weed the bed." He gestured down the hill. "The pump's down that way. Give 'em some water, and by the time you finish with that I should have something scrounged together for us." He flashed Andy that brief, wolfish smile of his, then moved past him towards the house.   
Andy stood with the bucket and mug of coffee and stared at the garden. _Beans and peppers only_ , he thought, willing himself to not forget. _Weed the garden. Get water from the pump. Water the garden_. He repeated it to himself once more, then made his way across the grass, resolved to not fail. He stopped when he saw the rooster, waiting for him at the garden's edge. "I hope you and I won't have any more trouble," he said to it firmly. It made a growling sound in its throat and walked on. _Beans and peppers only_ , Andy thought to himself, and walked into the neatly planted rows.  
It was simple, honest work. The kind of work he was best suited for these days. Andy didn't suppose he was so unfortunate, if he could find satisfaction in something like this. Moving between carefully tended vegetable beds, the loamy smell of the earth rising up around him. One could argue that it was man's original purpose, to tend a garden, to watch it grow. Before hate and violence, before war, there had been a garden. _Beans and peppers only_ , he reminded himself sternly. It was important that he not let his thoughts wander too far from his purpose.   
He picked the vegetables and weeded the beds, not that there was much to weed, Eddie was clearly as fastidious in this as he was in all things. He stood at the edge of the garden for a moment afterwards and sipped his lukewarm coffee, looking down the hill towards the water pump. _Get water from the pump_ , he thought, pleased and relaxed, his muscles warm from the light work. _Water the garden_.  
"Who're you?"  
He didn't jump, but his grip squeezed on the mug without him meaning it to, and he jerked his head around to see a man standing not ten feet away, staring at him. God, he could have killed him twice over, he had been so oblivious to his surroundings. But no. He shouldn't think like that, not anymore.  
"Andrew Haldane," he answered, deciding it best to return a straightforward question with an answer in kind. "I'm a friend of Eddie's." He stepped forward, held out his hand, but the man only folded his arms and scowled at him suspiciously. He was an older man, mid-fifties or so, the few remaining hairs left on his head growing out wild.   
"That so?" He gestured with his shoulder towards Andy's car. "That yours, too?" His accent was quite similar to Eddie's, but far stronger.  
"It is," Andy replied evenly, dropping his hand and settling back on his heels. "Is there a problem?"  
"Hiya, Len." They both turned to see that Eddie had appeared on the porch. He was leaning against the post, one long clean line of a man. Andy felt a slow unfurling of admiring want start up in his chest.   
"You really know this fella, Jones?" Len asked, his hostility dropping away only slightly.  
"I do," Eddie answered. "You're talking to Captain Haldane, the finest man and marine I know. Skipper, this is Len Steele, another fine man. He and his wife run the post office and goods store in town. They also make the best damn barbecue you'll ever eat."  
"Well, shit," Len said, grinning and dropping his arms. He stepped forward and shook Andy's hand. "Good to meet ya."  
"Why don't you come inside and have a bite of breakfast with us," Eddie said, and Len's smile turned impossibly more pleased. "Don't worry about the watering, Skip, I'll see to that later."  
The three of them sat down around Eddie's little table, and Andy tried to keep up as Len tucked into the food and proceeded to chatter his way through the meal. It was all local gossip, from what Andy could discern. Len was friendly now that Eddie had vouched for him, and he kept turning to Andy in order to further explain himself as he thought it necessary. From his and Eddie's easy familiarity with one another, Andy surmised that this was a regular occurrence.   
Afterwards, Andy and Eddie followed Len out onto the porch. "Thanks Ed," Len said, giving his stomach an appreciative pat. "Don't wait on an excuse to come on into town and see us. You too, Mister Haldane."  
"Please, it's Andy." Len threw his head back and laughed like Andy had cracked a surprising joke.  
"You're alright, Andy," he said, after he recovered. "I'll see to it that everyone knows you're alright."  
"Appreciate you stopping by, Len," Eddie said, and Len nodded to them both and set off across the lawn, disappearing into the line of eastern trees.  
"You hear that, Hillbilly?" Andy said. He made a show of settling down into the chair on Eddie's porch, crossing his ankles and folding his hands along his stomach. "I'm alright."  
"Means more than you might think," Eddie said, turning in to face him with his hands clasped behind his back. "Folk around here are downright clannish, and they don't trust strangers. Steele's got the ear of the whole valley; he tells them not to mind you, you're all set."  
"Having you claim me isn't enough?"  
"No, Sir," Eddie said with a snort. "They barely know me. None of 'em could understand it when I bought this bit of land and moved myself up here. People are going, not coming. Last twenty years have been hard on this place."  
"Hmm." Andy thought it over carefully, visualized tucking the information away in a drawer where he wouldn't forget it. The whole country was recovering from the effects of the war and the hard years that had preceded it, but he knew some communities were struggling more than others. It was a shame that the people who called this beautiful land home were having to suffer in order to keep it. He looked back at Eddie. "Len seemed quite at home at your table."  
"He stops by regular. He's an old busybody underneath the rest, but he means well enough." Eddie propped his hip against the porch rail, set his hands on either side of him along the wood. "Better than it was. First few months, both him and his wife were coming around nearly every day. Like to drove me mad." Andy tipped his head questioningly and Eddie looked away, suddenly uncomfortable. "Think they were hoping to get me tied to one of their daughters." He shrugged. "Like I said, folk are leaving, especially the young ones. Not a lotta prospects around here."  
"Prospects," Andy echoed, amused. He couldn't blame them. Who wouldn't look at Eddie and want him, one way or another? "How did you handle that?"  
If Eddie had looked uncomfortable before, he was openly discomposed now. "I might've." He stopped, standing back up and holding his hands at his side, like he was making a report. "I might've suggested to Len that my war wounds extended further south than they do."  
"At ease, Lieutenant," Andy said wryly. "There are worse sins by far." He shifted his gaze past Eddie's shoulder to keep his eyes from dropping towards his chest, his stomach. He was constantly amazed by the human capacity to feel so many conflicting emotions simultaneously. Pain and humor, regret and desire. It seemed a miracle man could stand upright, against the twisting pull of their own hearts. "Most decisions seem to come down to choosing the lesser of two evils, don't they? We have to follow our own conscience, but I personally always found the idea of that level of deception distasteful. I can't blame any man for choosing a wife and family over a lonely life, however." He'd always wanted children of his own. He looked back at Eddie; he was staring at him as if he'd suddenly started speaking Japanese, his gaze piercing. "I hope I haven't offended you. I know you would act with integrity, no matter what life you chose for yourself." He smiled, but Eddie only frowned in response, looking away with a jerking motion of his head.  
"No, Sir," he said. "Just. Just not something I'm accustomed to discussing, that's all."  
Understandable. Andy had only ever had a handful of lovers with whom he'd felt close enough to confide those keenly felt fears, those hopes. Perhaps Eddie hadn't been so fortunate as to have even that. "What comes next?" He asked, and Eddie shot him a wary, questioning look. "Breakfast squared away, the garden tended to. How do you pass the rest of your day?"  
"As I like," Eddie answered, his smile flashing, stance loosening. "That was the whole idea behind moving my ass up this hill." He drummed his fingers along the porch rail, then gestured with his head. "Wanna take a walk?"  
They took a long, meandering walk through the woods, Eddie entertaining Andy with stories about the locals, about his childhood memories of the area. He seemed to know without a word being said that Andy would rather listen, and so Andy was able to sink down into the comfort of his sharp drawl, his near presence, so long relied upon. Eddie had always had a way of giving Andy exactly what he needed and nothing more. Andy walked by his side and let himself be content with that. They came across a berry bush, and Eddie loaded both their palms up with the purple-black fruit, so that by the time they returned to the cabin Eddie's lips and fingers were stained from their juices. Andy felt the low pooling want; it only ever seemed to deepen.   
That evening, Andy stood in the kitchen and snapped beans while Eddie made dinner and poured them each a measure of whiskey. The remaining berries were piled in the center of the table and Eddie kept crossing over to stand beside him and pop a couple more into his mouth. He was humming, smiling, sharp movement and bright blue eyes. "Whatever happened to your guitar, Hillbilly?" Andy asked.  
"Dunno. Probably left behind on Pavuvu, if I had to venture a guess." Eddie's brow furrowed in the way it did when he was turning a thought over. "Maybe some other marine picked it up, put it to use. That'd be alright."  
"I'm sure they wouldn't have your same touch." Eddie had played with an ease and skill that consistently had Andy digging his feet into place to keep from wandering closer. He shrugged off the compliment with a laughing scoff. "Not interested in a replacement?"  
"It's funny." Eddie pulled a skillet from the shelf and set it to the stove. "Not like I would say no if someone walked up and handed me a guitar, but I can't seem to talk myself around to buying one. Guess I got attached to the old thing. The fingers miss it." He waggled a hand, his back still turned. He went back to humming, and Andy made a new drawer in his mind, folded the moment up and tucked it away.   
Late that night, Andy woke with a start, his heart pounding so hard he could feel its drumming in his throat. He listened intently, muscles coiling, and heard the sound of a hard thud and a low, muffled exclamation. He rolled to his feet and made his way to the stairs, moving carefully through the dark. "Hillbilly," he called, as he neared the bottom.  
"I'm alright, Sir." Andy reoriented himself to his voice. "Fell off the damn couch, is all." But he sounded wrong, distant and flat. Andy groped his way forward until his thigh hit the back of the couch, then maneuvered his way around to the front of it and moved along until his knee bumped against Eddie's. He reached out, it was interesting, how his hand remembered exactly where to travel in the dark to find Eddie's shoulder. He eased himself down beside him, leaned against him just enough to get a sense of how he was situated. Eddie was leaning forward, his arms propped against his knees.  
"One good thing to be said about sleeping on the ground. There's nowhere to roll away to." Eddie didn't answer, and he reached over and put a hand on his knee. "What was it?"  
"Didn't mean to wake you," Eddie said in answer, and Andy tightened his grip.  
"None of that." He thought for a moment, then spoke again. "I don't suppose I need you to describe it. And there's no answer that I know except to endure. But I won't have you apologizing or trying to shift away from me. There's no shame in it." Eddie sat back with a soft rush of breath, and Andy followed after, leaning back against the couch, his hand slipping along Eddie's leg as he went. He gave it one last pat, then removed his hand.   
"It's not like I didn't expect it to stick with me," Eddie said after a long silence. "Just seems like I always get 'em right when I'm feeling straight. Like I gotta pay the balance for every good day." Andy could feel him turn his head to look at him, could just discern the outline of his face, a denser darkness, only a few inches away from his own. "Don't want it to be like this forever, Skip. Seems like I ain't ever gonna get any real distance from it."  
"We're in the early days, Eddie," Andy answered, putting all the assurance he could into his words. "We have a whole lifetime to find a way forward from it."  
"You really believe that?"   
"I do," he said firmly. "More than faith or belief, I know you. You've always made your own happiness. You'll see, it'll win out in the end." Eddie slid down, twisted himself around until he was situated on the couch with his head against Andy's shoulder. The way he used to sleep when they shared a hole.  
"You can head back up, Sir," he said, even as he settled against him. "I'm okay." Andy turned his head so that his nose brushed up against Eddie's curls, soft and thick. He'd like to dip his face down and bury it there, inhale him with huge gulping breaths. He held himself still.  
"Despite how it may sometimes seem, the war is over. I think it's time you started calling me Andy."  
"Andy." He said is slowly, awkwardly, as if his tongue wasn't shaped to form those sounds, string them together. "That'd be a hard habit to break. You'll always be the skipper."  
Andy considered just taking the blow, not pushing back. It was a clear enough answer, after all. But something about the quiet, the familiar intimacy of Eddie's body leaned up against him, prompted him to speak. "I don't want to be. It was a privilege, but now it's done. I couldn't go back to it even if I wished to." Eddie lifted his head to look at him; Andy had to shift back a bit so that his lips didn't brush along his forehead and nose. He knew Eddie couldn't see him through the absolute darkness they were closed up in, but he could still somehow feel the weight of his eyes.   
"Andy," Eddie said again, stern, like he was trying to convince himself. He chuckled, put his head back down. "Go on to bed, Andy," he said, voice ripe with amusement.  
"Mockery," Andy said dryly, tipping his head back on the couch. "We're moving forward by leaps and bounds. And I'm staying right here, Eddie. I'm where I want to be."


	2. Chapter 2

Eddie caught sight of Ack-Ack through the window, making his way up through the trees. He was carrying two brown paper bags, one tucked under his arm and the other held in his hand, leaving his other arm free to swing at his side. Eddie turned away, turned back to the stove and the meal he was frying up. He wondered what the man had picked up this time. Andy had taken to walking to town every few days, far more often than Eddie was inclined to go. It had started with him wanting to mail a letter back home to his folks, that and pick up a decent pair of boots, so Eddie had taken him down and introduced him around town. Haldane talked to everyone he met, same as he always did, so that what should have been a twenty minute visit turned instead into a three hour social event, most of it taking place on the front porch of Len's goods store. He still had it, that quiet, open charm that marked him and drew people to him like cold hands to a warm fire, no matter how changed he sometimes seemed to Eddie.  
Now he went into town regularly, and he came back each time with some sign of goodwill that had been pressed into his hands. Usually it was something sweet, as if there was no other answer to give to those warm smiles and kind eyes except something laced with thick honey, or the ripest, most toothsome fruit. Had them wrapped around his one finger, and it had only taken a few weeks.   
He finished dinner and poured them both a fresh cup of coffee, but Andy didn't come in. Eddie went out after him, scanning the yard until he made him out, standing on the far edge of the vegetable patch and looking down the slope. Eddie stood and watched him for a moment; it was a new habit of Haldane's that Eddie still hadn't managed to wrap his head around. He had always been thoughtful, ready and willing to discuss any subject under the sun, at length and in depth. But he had also been given to movement, seemed to best enjoy a conversation walking around camp, or even pacing back and forth in his tent. Not anymore. Now, Eddie often found him lost in silent thought, staring out at nothing, or down at his own hands like he couldn't recall what their purpose was. It was worrisome; Eddie supposed it was something to do with the real reason Ack-Ack had chosen to come see him, whatever that might be.  
He made his way across the yard towards him. Andy had placed the pokes at his feet, and Eddie watched the rooster wander up and scratch at one of them, watched Andy nudge him away with the side of his boot and a soft murmur. "What're we looking at-" he caught himself on the 'sir', corrected, "-Ack-Ack?" Haldane turned and looked over his shoulder at him; he looked calm and certain, free of the alarmingly hesitant expression that he sometimes wore these days.   
"Ira Full is of the opinion that you're not using your land as you should, Hillbilly."  
"Is he now?" Ira Full was an ass.  
"We had an interesting conversation about winter wheat. I ended up buying some seeds, and this." He reached down into one of the bags and pulled out an almanac. "Fifteen cents." He offered it out to Eddie, who shook his head as he took it and came to stand beside him.   
"Thick," he commented, riffling the pages. "What're we gonna do with this?"  
"Learn how to grow wheat properly," Ack-Ack answered. He gestured down the slope. "Well-drained soil and abundant sunshine is apparently all that's required."  
"And why do I wanna grow wheat?" Eddie asked, wanting to laugh, not wanting to think about the uneasy feeling in his chest caused by Andy's words.  
"To sell?" Andy suggested. "Although I admit, I was mostly thinking about fresh warm bread when I decided to buy the seeds. I've always enjoyed the smell of rising bread."  
"You know how to bake bread?" Eddie asked. "Cuz I don't."  
"I'm sure they have a book for that, too," Andy answered easily.  
Eddie put his hands on his hips, his elbow nudging against Haldane's side. There wasn't any real harm in it, he supposed. If Andy felt an inclination to grow something, why the hell not? But wheat took more than a season to grow, didn't it? It made that feeling in his chest start to roil and clatter. Andy had a family, a whole life, waiting for him up north. He wouldn't be here, baking goddamn bread, a year from now. Hell, Eddie likely wouldn't be here himself. He wasn't planning on staying, he'd never intended to stay. But if there was a man in this world who wouldn't throw himself straight into hell on Haldane's say so, Eddie had yet to meet him. He wasn't going to kick up a fuss about wheat, of all things.  
"Well, Skipper," he said, bumping his bare foot against Haldane's boot, "Sounds like you got some work lined out for yourself. But that'll keep until tomorrow. Let's eat."   
"Nettie sent me back with an apple pie," Ack-Ack said, scooping up the pokes.  
"You don't say," Eddie answered, grinning.  
The next morning Eddie fed the chickens and gathered eggs while Andy paced back and forth along the grass, measuring out the beds. Eddie took his time in the vegetable patch, leisurely picking weeds while Andy struggled with the hand tiller. It didn't last long; Haldane was naturally gifted in all things. Soon enough he was furrowing through the earth at a steady pace, and Eddie was watching his shoulders bunch under the loose fabric of his shirt, the rhythmic flex and shift of the muscles in his arms. The war years had left him lean, but hadn't been able to take away that neatly contained strength, power harnessed and turned to a purpose. Want hit Eddie like a punch to the gut, left him sucking in air and turning away, heading back to the house. Most of the time he did a fair job at ignoring it, but other times, hell. Other times it was bad enough to give him the shakes. And it didn't help, that Andy had sat right there on the porch and casually swept away any lingering doubt Eddie might have had hanging over him since Melbourne. Andy had been interested once, when he was loose from drink and coming down off those long months on Guadalcanal. But that felt like two lifetimes ago, before Gloucester, before Peleliu. If he pushed too far and lost Ack-Ack, Lord, he didn't know how he'd come back from that.   
But then again, the man wasn't really his to keep or lose. Sure, it was nice to have him around, the both of them briefly at their leisure in this little space of time between the war and whatever the hell came next. But they would each be going their own way soon enough. Before Ack-Ack showed up, Eddie had been thinking about getting back ship-side. His days with the Corps were over, but there were other berths. He missed the constant motion, that sense of the world rolling away beneath his feet, a gratification that he only ever got from leaving or arriving. This hill was nice, but he'd always been given to rambling. _Rootless_ , his pa had always said, with a disapproving frown. _And whose fault is that_ , Eddie had wanted to say back, but he never did. It would have been too cruel, the man had struggled all his life to keep them fed and together, hadn't ever seemed to recover from the heartbreak of his brother dying so young, that long winter when they'd been between homes.  
The real danger wasn't in Haldane turning him down; Eddie scowled at the thought of how damn understanding Andy would probably be about the whole thing, letting him off with a kind word and a light joke. No, the real danger would be if he said yes, because Eddie was honest enough with himself to know it would be something more than just fucking between the two of them. He'd managed to steer clear of that kind of thing so far, hell, the one time he'd gone out looking for a fellow after coming home, the both of them had scarcely done more than unbuckle their pants. They'd gotten what they wanted out of each other, and then Eddie had gone home, it had been that simple. It wouldn't be like that with Ack-Ack. It would be...Lord, he didn't even know, but he wanted to. He wanted to know.   
Andy spent the morning and afternoon outside, came in that evening smiling with satisfaction and smelling like heat and dirt. Eddie got them each a tall glass of water and rye. He splashed a little extra rye in the glasses, didn't let himself think about what he was doing. They sat together on the couch, and it was easy to sit close because they'd been sitting shoved up together since Gloucester, and Andy had a way even before that of standing just a hair too near. Andy took a sip of his drink and leaned his head back, his eyes sliding shut. "Is it always like this?" He asked, a gravelly murmur that had Eddie's fingers twitching around his glass. His lips were barely curved. "Perfect, I mean."  
"The weather? Gets too hot and too cold, just like any other place." It was pretty damn perfect at the moment though, summer slipping away, a brisk warm wind and the leaves starting to drop.  
"Not just that. I can't call it tranquil, not when there's so much to do. But something akin to that feeling."  
"Don't go making it into something it ain't. Folk around here live hard and poor."  
"Yes," Andy said in agreement. "But one doesn't preclude the other." He turned his head along the back of the couch to look at Eddie, that unfaltering gaze, gray eyes that had never been steely. Eddie didn't think he would ever understand it, how Haldane had seen and done the things he had, and kept those same eyes all through it.   
"Here," Eddie said, sitting forward and holding his hand out for the glass. Ack-Ack handed it over to him unquestioningly, trusting. It was almost enough to make Eddie change his mind. But he leaned down and set both their glasses to the ground, then turned back towards him. Andy's expression didn't change when he shifted in close enough for their legs to tangle together, or when Eddie leaned in over him. It wasn't until Eddie put his hand on the side of his neck, pressed his thumb against the bend of his jaw where it curved up to meet his ear, that he blinked in surprise. Eddie put his other hand on his shoulder, and Andy's lips parted on a question, and Eddie bent his head down and kissed him.  
Andy went still beneath him. Not stiff, and not soft, but still, poised on the edge of a response. He made a murmuring sound against Eddie's lips, Eddie could feel the vibration of his throat against the palm of his hand. It made him exhale sharply through his nose, made his grip on Andy's shoulder tighten. He hadn't stopped him yet, so Eddie pushed against the knob of his neck with his fingers, urging Andy's head back a bit more, so he could get the angle just so, feel his lips fall open just a sliver more. Andy pulled in a deep, slow breath, his chest rising with it, his mouth warm, and Eddie started to slide away into the feel of him, and then Andy's hands were on his arms and he was moving him back. His eyes, when Eddie lifted his head to look at him, were as steady and warm as ever. His voice when he spoke was low and just a shade too thick.   
"Eddie. What's wrong?"  
"Wrong?" Eddie shook his head, tried to gather up his swimming thoughts. "Don't know. Guess I'm about to find out." Haldane's face was calm enough, but Eddie could see his distress in the tension of his jaw.  
"You needn't," he said, then cut himself off. He was still holding Eddie away with both his arms. "I would never want anything from you that you didn't want to give. If I've done something to make you think-"  
"Lord, Ack-Ack," Eddie bit out, pulling away from him. "What, you think I just up and decided I'd go on and throw a friendly fuck your way?  
"Throw a," Andy started to say, then stopped. "I'm sorry," he said after a moment. "No, you wouldn't do that." He sat up, ran a hand along his face. "I'm not sure what's happening here, Eddie. You said, in Melbourne." He stopped again, glanced at Eddie and then away.  
"What about Melbourne? At that beer party?" Eddie didn't remember what exactly he had said then, what with Haldane's knuckles brushing his side, his low-pitched voice asking Eddie to come away with him. At the time all he had known for sure was that he had to make it clear that it wasn't happening. "You think I didn't want you then?" Andy's eyes came back to him. "Course I did. But I knew it was a bad idea." He leaned down to pick his drink back up. "Wasn't sure you even remembered it, you were that lit."  
"I remember it," Andy said soberly. "Why was it a bad idea?" Eddie huffed a breath.  
"Can't go muddying the waters. Not smart to get too attached, not like that. You stop thinking straight, start taking risks you shouldn't. The men start to notice something's up." He drank deep from his glass and stared ahead at the unlit fireplace. Honestly, what a load of shit. Like he hadn't gotten attached, horribly attached.  
"Sounds like you're speaking from experience."  
"None directly, but I was seagoing long enough to work out a thing or two." He risked a glance back over at Ack-Ack. He was leaning forward, his forearms braced against his knees, staring down at his hands. Eddie couldn't see his expression, just the side of his nose and the hard line of his jaw, his lips pressed together. Then he turned his head, and Eddie saw the smile all over his face. Ack-Ack was the only man he'd ever known who could smile with his whole face while his mouth held a straight line.  
"So I've got a chance," he said. He was staring at Eddie like he'd just offered him the balm of Gilead.   
"A chance?" Eddie tried to ignore the flip of his stomach, the rising warmth in his chest. The space between them seemed to vibrate like a plucked string. "You've got more than that."   
"God, Eddie." He said it with sudden intensity, turning towards him on the couch. Eddie plunked his glass down on the floor with nerveless fingers, then slid over until they were sitting close together again. The comfortable ease between them was gone now, swallowed up. Andy put a careful hand on his knee, his fingers curling, his thumb running slow along the inside of his leg. "Alright?" He asked, watching Eddie. He leaned forward at Eddie's nod, lifting his free hand up to gingerly touch the side of Eddie's face. "And this?"  
It was too much, but that was the fault of his goddamn heart, not Andy and his callused, gentle hand. Eddie grabbed his wrist, turned his head to nip his palm. "You gonna ask permission each time you move your hand?"  
"I feel like I should." But he dragged the one on Eddie's knee up until it was cupping his hip, a searing trail. Christ, Eddie had always liked his hands.  
"Problem is, we got too many things between us," he said seriously, watching Andy watch him. He let it drag out a moment, then grinned. "So take off that shirt and trousers."   
That seemed to do the trick. The hesitancy fell away from Andy's face, something hard and heated taking its place. The hand on Eddie's hip tightened, the one by his face moved around until Andy had him by the back of the neck, a firm grip. There was something implacable, almost angry, about the hold he had on him, but Eddie knew if he gave the slightest sign Andy would let him go. He didn't know why the knowledge sent a thrill of excitement through him, why it made his blood rise the way it did. He dropped his hand from Andy's arm and grabbed him by his shirt. Andy pulled, and Eddie let him, and then Andy's lips were on his, clumsy at first with all the spilling fervency, teeth knocking together, then suddenly smoothing out. Eddie didn't waste any time dancing around it, he opened his mouth and let Andy do as he liked, which was groan heavily and kiss him senseless, his arm wrapping around Eddie's back to haul him in against him. His mouth was faintly peppery from the whiskey, he smelled like sweat and lye soap. Eddie's soap. The thought sent a sharp pain through his chest, made something like panic start to bang out an uneven beat along his ribs. Fuck, it was going to hurt, it was already making him ache.   
As if he picked up on it, Andy tore his mouth away and dropped his head down against Eddie's neck. "God, I'm sorry, Eddie, I'm sorry," he near babbled, his grip still tight, his breath ragged.  
"What the hell are you apologizing for?" Eddie said roughly. He got to work on the buttons of Andy's shirt, flipping them free by touch.   
"Everything. God. You can't know." Eddie got his shirt open and ran his hands along his chest and Andy shuddered. "I have to get this right. It's been so long."   
"Yeah?" It was his own fault if it had been, there was no chance Andy wasn't getting ass thrown regularly in his path. A sudden wave of possessiveness had him pushing him back against the couch so he could look at him. Jesus, his body. "How long?"  
"Oh," Andy said, all rueful amusement, dropping his head back as Eddie flicked his thumbs over his nipples. "Quantico."  
Eddie froze for a moment, trying to take that in, then barked a laugh and grabbed him by his perfect jaw, his thumb finding the dip in his chin. "You pulling one over on me? Not even in Melbourne?" Hell, everyone had gotten some in Melbourne.   
"I tried, as you might recall," Andy answered dryly. "Got turned down flat." Eddie felt that wave roll over him again, it was almost infuriating, the tumbling, drowning pressure of need and tenderness.  
"C'mere," he said, his voice coming out harsh when he'd meant it to be something else entirely. He yanked Andy back to him and pulled him down on top of him on the couch, swallowing a pleased curse as his solid weight came down against him. Andy huffed out a hard breath, then took Eddie by his ears and kissed him again, insistently thorough, Eddie should have known he'd be the type to kiss a fellow with painstaking sincerity. He slid his hands up Andy's back, kneading against muscle and bone as he went, eventually burying them in his hair. His finger bumped along a knot of flesh and he tracked it, a long, slightly sunken line of puckered skin. "What's this?" He said, or tried to say into Andy's mouth, and Andy pulled back with a jerking motion and a low choked sound.  
"That," he said, with an odd sort of finality. "Yes, that." He sat up, pulled away; Eddie propped himself up on his elbows and watched him scrub both his hands along his face. When he removed them, he was collected, calm, only betrayed by a faint tremor in his fingers as he ran them along the spot on his skull that Eddie had lingered over. "That would be my head wound."   
"Head wound," Eddie repeated, a feeling like ice starting to creep in and replace the rippling heat.  
"The one that got me sent home." He looked at him then, his gaze steady. He smiled, but it only reached his lips, and he let it go quickly. But he still tried for a light tone. "I understand I made it into a handful of medical publications as well. I've been told that I was very fortunate."  
He'd wondered what it had been, had watched Ack-Ack carefully the first few days for some signifier of a lingering injury, but never found any. And the relief that had moved through him when he'd pulled Andy's shirt open and seen him all unblemished, strong and whole, far removed from the mess of mangled flesh that Eddie was left with, but God he'd only felt thankful, so goddamn thankful that Andy hadn't gone through anything like that.   
He'd gone through something else entirely.  
Eddie stood up, moving around Andy where he was sitting on the couch so that he was standing in front of him. He lifted his hands, waited, then moved them hesitantly through Andy's hair when he tilted his head in permission. He found the spot quickly now that he knew to look for it. It was above his left brow, just past his hairline. A thin scar, but jagged and more than an inch long, and slightly depressed.   
"I don't remember it," Andy said to Eddie's navel. "I'm told we were attempting to scout in order to direct fire, and a sniper happened to catch me." Eddie fought against his own body to keep his hands from tightening on his hair. "It was a glancing shot, but it hit my helmet just so, and some of the steel, well." He gestured with his hand. "It was difficult for a time, but I'm much improved these days."  
_Improved_. "Difficult," Eddie said numbly. He couldn't seem to do anything but repeat Andy's own words back to him.   
"I had trouble recalling words, names. Writing was a challenge. But that's become much more manageable. At times I have trouble holding on to a thought. The best advice I've received has been to keep on challenging myself, not to become frustrated with setbacks."  
Things were starting to arrange themselves in a neat, terrible row. Eddie kept circling that jagged scar with his fingers; he couldn't seem to stop. Ack-Ack's strange silences, how he turned uncertain at odd moments, seemed to hesitate over responses. Was it all because of this little line of puckered flesh? He forced himself to move his hands away, slid them down until they were cupping Andy's face. Andy looked up at him, that quiet gaze. "Should have been there with you, Skip."  
"No, Eddie," he said firmly. He reached for Eddie's wrist, and Eddie dropped his hands away from his face, took a step back. There was a storm all in his chest and head, making it hard to hear his own thoughts, hard to mark the difference between loyalty and devotion.  
"I'll do anything, Sir," he managed to say, forcing his hands to his side. God, he needed Ack-Ack to tell him what to do, to move him forward, he was drowning in his own body. He saw the flash of pain on Andy's face, but couldn't move his hands.   
"There's nothing to be done, Hillbilly," he answered finally. "Come and sit." Eddie sat, as near to him as he always had, joined at the shoulders and knees. But he didn't touch him, and Andy didn't reach for him again.

* * *

  
"Morning Howard, Ralph," Andy said, knocking his boots along the side of the steps before ascending them.   
"Well, Andy, what d'you know?" Ralph said. He and Howard were a familiar sight to Andy by now, standing together on the porch outside Len's goods store. Andy had wondered if the cold weather would have any effect on their routine, but so far they were still there each time he cleared the treeline and rounded the corner on to the town's main street. Its only street, really.  
"Less every day," he said ruefully. "You gentlemen have any suggestions for keeping deer away from the wheat?"  
"Gun or a guard dog, that's the only sure thing," Ralph answered.  
"You can run up some fishing line round the beds," Howard said. "Set 'em 'bout three feet high. It'll befuddle 'em."   
"Fishing lines," Andy said thoughtfully. "I'll try that first. Thanks, boys." They laughed, as they always did, being a good ten years older than Andy, and he was smiling as he entered the store.  
"Well, and another letter just came for you the other day, Mister Haldane," Rita Steele said. She had been standing at the counter with Marie Cox, Howard's wife, but moved around the room to the stand that had been designated for postal use when she looked up and saw him. She refused to call him Andy as he'd asked, but called him by his surname so lightly and teasingly that it he couldn't help but enjoy it.  
"And I have one to post," he said, pulling the letter from his coat pocket. "Thank you, Rita." He bought fishing line and a handful of other necessities, exchanging pleasantries with Rita and Marie as he did so. The goods store was the center of this small but sprawling community, and Andy enjoyed the warm way the locals greeted one another as they came through the door, and how the Steeles seemed nothing but pleased to have folk linger on the porch. By the time he stepped back outside, the hard chill in the air had lost some of its sting.  
"Case you don't come round in the meantime, I got me a hog I been fattening up to kill," Howard said when Andy came back out the door. Andy didn't know what the appropriate response was to that, so he tried a grave nod. "The missus and I are gonna have us a pig pickin', come Sunday next. You and Ed should come on by."  
"I've never been to one," Andy said mildly. He hoped it wasn't what it sounded to be. Howard seemed to take that as agreement, because he started rattling off directions to his home faster than Andy could process. He waited until Howard wound down, then tried a self-deprecating smile. "I'm sorry, Howard, I'm not sure I caught any of that." Howard and Ralph both laughed, and Howard waved his hand dismissively.  
"Aw, Ed knows how to find us," he said, and Andy said his goodbyes and turned towards home.  
Home. Even understanding his own heart as he did, Andy was surprised by how quickly he had begun to think of Eddie's small cabin as home. He hadn't meant to linger as long as he had, truly. He simply hadn't been able to entertain the thought of sending another letter, waiting days and weeks on a reply. And when he arrived, Eddie had embraced him, made room for him in his life as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He should have told him about his injury from the very first. He should have thanked him, and apologized, and returned to Massachusetts. But he hadn't, and he couldn't bring himself to regret it. If Eddie never touched him again, he still wouldn't regret those sweetly desperate moments.  
God, just thinking about it was enough to make his heart pound, his blood pool low in his stomach. The assured way Eddie had kissed him, how he had run his hands over him, bold and confident. Andy had indulged in more than a few foolish fantasies over the years involving Eddie's hands on him, but the reality had been something else entirely. And how quickly it had ended, Eddie's searing eyes and wracked expression as he stepped away from him. The following days had been terribly quiet and tense. Andy would have left then, but he knew it would hurt Eddie if he did, would make him think he had driven Andy away, when in truth Andy had only himself to blame. They stayed close to each other, as if Eddie too felt that stepping away would be a deeply wounding blow, but they were merely going through their familiar motions.  
One day, perhaps a week later, Andy had been stretched out in the grass, enjoying the mild sunlight, the perfect weather, when Eddie's shadow fell over him. He smiled without opening his eyes and gestured to the spot beside him, trying to reassure. It wasn't working, Eddie still watched him like he was old glass. But he settled in next to him. Andy started to drift away to the sound of birds calling back and forth, trees rustling in the wind, and then,  
"Ack-Ack." Eddie's voice was resolved, intent. Andy cracked an eye open and looked over at him. "You're just the same."  
He didn't understand what he meant for a long moment, and the sharp pain he felt when he finally worked it out had him grimacing, closing his eyes to try and hide it. Eddie hadn't ever lied to him before. "Please, Eddie. This isn't necessary."  
"I mean it." Andy kept his eyes closed and fought against a swell of bitterness, and then Eddie's hand wrapped around his elbow. "Andy," he said. That snagged him, had him turning his head to look back over at him. God, his eyes were blue, could burn like flame. His mouth was set in a grim line, but for all that his expression was hesitant, careful. "Liked you from the first for all kinds of reasons. They're all still there." He cleared his throat and looked away. Andy hadn't known how to respond, had reached down and squeezed Eddie's fingers where they were still holding him by his elbow. Eddie's hand twitched, and he pulled free.  
It was enough to end the fraught silence between them, which was enough for Andy. Hope was a curiously feathered beast, after all, always ready to shake out its wings, to take flight. He returned to simply enjoying Eddie's company, to slowly mapping out what might come next. He'd always thought it best to have a firm goal in mind, to keep the path that led to that goal open and mutable. Right now, his goals were clear. He wanted Eddie's continued friendship above all else. He wanted to leave before Eddie tired of him being there. He didn't want to leave at all, if he could somehow manage it.   
He forced himself to stop churning it over, turned his attention back to the present. The cold was biting, but so far the snow was scant, falling fitfully and leaving behind a hoary dusting. He had always enjoyed cold weather, mostly for the small physical pleasures it brought. The sight of breath gusting out from warm mouths, how the chill in the air contrasted against a body heated by its own movement. Now, in this most rural and isolated of settings, he found that he also enjoyed the silence that seemed to descend on the world as winter settled in, how each small sound seemed to crack and echo across something vast. And of course, that feeling when he opened the door to a room lit by thin sunlight and low firelight, and walked through the kitchen to find Eddie, glancing up from the chair where he was sitting and carving a new latch for the chicken coop.   
"Howard Cox is getting ready to kill a hog," Andy said, watching Eddie as he took off his coat. The corner of Eddie's mouth pulled up.  
"Yeah?" He turned his attention back to the latch and Andy joined him by the fire, crouching down to warm his hands.  
"He's invited us to something called a pig pickin'. Tell me you know what that is."  
"Reckon you're imagining us all standing around in a circle and jabbing the creature 'til it gives up the ghost," Eddie said, still smiling. "Nah, we just help him cook it up after." He looked back up at Andy. "It's a party, Ack-Ack. You'll like it." He frowned down at the latch. "Wood's warped. Gonna have to start this over."  
"Here, let me," Andy said, and Eddie turned the latch over to him with a grateful grunt.  
The afternoon of Howard's gathering, Andy walked inside after checking the wheat and shooing the chickens back into their coop, to the sight of Eddie washing himself in front of the oven. He stood in the open doorway and stared, and Eddie turned away with a shake. "Shut the door, Skip, you're letting in the chill." Andy tore his gaze away with a muttered apology, turning around to shut the door, to collect himself.  
Eddie was perfectly formed and always had been. Lean without being skinny, with a subtly loping grace that made him a pleasure to watch in motion. Even on campaign, underfed and pushed to his physical limits, he'd never lost that unsparing beauty. But Andy had barely noted any of that. His eyes had fallen straight to his torso.  
He stared at his hand, still wrapped around the door handle. If regrets could be shaped and held, his own would be a leaden weight grafted fast to him, heavy enough to drag him down until he crumpled under the building pressure. He flinched when Eddie spoke behind him.  
"It's fine, Ack-Ack. Ain't pretty, but I don't mind you seeing." Andy looked over his shoulder at him, careful to keep his gaze on his face. His tone had been been easy, but Eddie was anything but. He was turned towards him, straight backed and square shouldered, his mouth set like he was readying himself for a beach landing under fire.  
Surely he wasn't such a low coward as to look away from the consequences of his own actions. He'd felt the ringing blow of every death, felt its pealing each time he looked into eyes shattered by loss and fear. But Eddie having to pay the price of being under his command: that was too much to bear. But he forced himself to turn.   
The stretching mass of scars along his ribs were the most shocking, the flesh knotted and uneven, and a vivid, angry red, despite the fact that it had been more than a year since Eddie had been wounded. But Andy knew it was the long scar running across his abdomen that had nearly killed him. That second shot, his hand rising up, his head falling back. Andy stared at the spot where the bullet had entered, marked by a dimpling in the skin there.  
"It was touch and go for a while there," Eddie said. His voice was strained, reaching for a light tone and falling short. "Did you know a man can live without part of his stomach? I sure didn't. Had to take out a part of my liver too, but apparently that grows back." He shook his head. "I still don't know about that one." He turned back to the stovetop, dipping the washrag into the pot of water he'd heated up. "I get the odd pang now and then, but it's no bother beyond that." He returned to cleaning himself, wringing the rag out and rubbing the soap briskly across the fabric.   
"May I?" Andy didn't quite realize what he was doing until it was done, stepping forward and holding a hand out. Eddie only hesitated a moment before handing the rag over, all while his eyes turned stark, close to frantic. The man was too in the habit of giving Andy what he thought he needed without a care for himself. Andy couldn't ever repay that ungrudging trust, much less find the language to express the well of remorse and grievous love centered in his chest. And Eddie didn't want his apologies, would only be vexed if Andy attempted one. He stepped in close, set the cloth gently against Eddie's side.  
Eddie's chest gave one great heave, and then he held himself carefully still. Andy stretched the rag out with his fingers so that it was lying thin and flat between his palm and Eddie's skin. He could feel the scars under his hand, and the grooves of Eddie's ribs beneath that. He listened to Eddie breathe, quiet and only slightly unsteady, watched the faint flex in his stomach. He dragged his hand slowly down his ribs, across his body, coming to a stop over the spot where the bullet had gone in.  
"I saw you," he said, looking down at his hand. "Every day." He started tracing his way back, across the deep straight line where they had cut into him, back up along his side. "Not just this." He clamped his teeth together, frustrated with himself. He didn't have the words, maybe he'd never had them.   
"Andy." He looked up, met Eddie's gaze. Here, if he'd ever needed it, was one reason more to give thanks to God that he'd lived through the war: discovering a new expression on Eddie's face, a different shade of blue in his eyes. Andy suddenly knew with a sweet certainty that Eddie would let him close the distance between them, would let him kiss him again. Instead he handed the rag back to Eddie and stepped away.  
"Save me some water," he said, fighting against the upward twitch of his lips at Eddie's nonplussed expression. He smoothed it away as quickly as he could, but Eddie caught it, and Andy watched something between a scowl and a grin tug at his lip.   
"Aye, Captain," he drawled, turning back to the stovetop.  
A few hours later Andy closed the door behind them and he and Eddie set off through the trees. They didn't speak, but this time the silence between them was filled with a baffled sort of hesitancy, heady, thrilling. Andy was almost breathless with nerves, like a boy on his first date, sweaty-palmed and seized by the potential that the day held, every hope wrapped up in the person walking by his side. He glanced over at Eddie, caught him watching him. Eddie looked down and away with a startlingly shy smile, and Andy felt a firework go off in his stomach.  
Eddie hadn't been exaggerating when he'd told Andy it would be a party. The sound of music drifted to them before they cleared the forest, grew more distinct as they crossed Harold's fallow fields and pastureland. Andy watched Eddie's fingers start to tap out a beat along his thigh. Coming in sight of the yard, Andy saw several people gathered around a low smoking pit, several more on the porch, the source of the music. Children were running back and forth, but not many. It was as Eddie had said: young families were slowly making their way elsewhere. Howard, standing by the pit, waved them over when he saw them coming. The smell wafting up was incredible, the area around the pit almost cozy from the heat of the smoldering fire and the press of people gathered close together. "You fellas shown up just in time to help me pull the pig off," he said in greeting, pressing a large clear jar into Andy's hands.  
"What's this?" Andy asked, and the men laughed uproariously.   
"The hell you think it is?" Gurney Shreve said. Andy looked at Eddie, who just grinned and tipped his chin encouragingly.   
He knew it was a mistake as soon as he put the jar to his lips. His mouth numbed, his throat burned, and it was only thanks to the last dregs of foolish pride that he was able to swallow the mouthful of thick liquid he'd so trustingly taken. Andy's chest heaved as he fought back against the urge to cough. "Christ," he managed to say, his voice shot.   
"Not bad, Andy," Howard said, turning back towards the pit.   
"How 'bout you, Ed?" One of the men said, speaking up to be heard over the careening fiddle.  
"Go easy on him," Andy said, letting his voice carry as he handed the jar off. "Let him have too much and he might not be able to play for you boys." He kept a straight face when Eddie shot him a look. One good turn deserved another.  
"What's that?" Len called from the porch. "You can pick a tune, Jones?"  
"Aw-" Eddie started to say.  
"On the guitar," Andy said, talking over him. "The man can play anything."  
"Budge over, Ossie," the fiddler said, and the man playing the guitar stood from his seat. Eddie threw Andy one last look, then climbed up on the porch and took the proffered guitar with a politely correct 'thank you', sitting down and strumming his fingers along the strings. "Know 'Ride Old Buck to Water'?" The fiddler asked.  
"'Fraid not," Eddie answered.   
"Good," the man said with a grin, and launched into a reeling tune, the woman on the banjo jumping in after. Eddie frowned, his brow creasing in concentration as he listened, his eyes fixed on the instrument in his lap. His fingers hovered hesitantly over the strings, moving along the chords without actually touching them, and then he joined in, picking the rhythm up with scarcely a stumble, deft and sure. "Well hot damn," the fiddler shouted, as one of the listeners on the porch whooped and stamped his foot. Andy turned away, a deep wrong set to right, and felt far too pleased with himself to decline when offered the jar again, although this time he took a more judicious sip.  
They kept Eddie on the porch after that, not that he seemed too put out over it. Andy and a couple other men helped Howard with the pig. It had been roasted whole, and smelled like nothing Andy had ever experienced before. They carried it into the house, where the furniture had been shoved to the side to make space for a long sturdy board spread with food. The door stayed open as people passed in and out, and the lively music kept up without pause as Andy made conversation, enjoying the rough bustle.  
Some time later he came to stand by Eddie on the porch, set a heaping plate on his knee when the song he was playing wound down. "Thought you might want some," he said as Eddie put a steadying hand on the plate and looked up at him.  
"Thanks, Ack-Ack," Eddie said, flashing him that new, shy smile and setting the guitar to the side. He picked up a strip of pork and popped it in his mouth, gave a low pleased hum. Andy imagined taking him by the wrist and licking his fingers clean one at a time.  
Now that the pig had been roasted and the fire allowed to die down, the majority of the crowd had congregated in the house or around the porch. Andy found a spot on the porch's edge where he could listen to the music and watch Eddie play, settling back along the rail with a soft sigh. Someone came to stand beside him, and Andy turned his head to see John, Howard's teenage son, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. "Everything alright?" He asked, familiar by now with all the signs of a restless spirit.  
"You and Mister Jones really fought together, huh?" The boy looked nervously about, and Andy wondered if he'd been instructed not to ask certain questions of the pair of them.  
"We did," he answered.  
"What's it like?" John asked, then pulled a face. "Not the fighting. Reckon it was no good, yeah? I mean, what's it like to travel? Cross an ocean?" Andy folded his arms, very aware of all the implications of the question. A young boy eager for adventure, a future with limited scope if he stayed where he was. He wasn't sure Howard Cox would appreciate him encouraging his son't interest in the wider world.  
"I'm not sure I could do it justice," he said eventually. "It's beyond me to describe the sun rising up out of the ocean, or how vastly different the night sky can seem on the opposite side of the world. Or the peculiar feeling of entering a jungle where every plant and creature is foreign to you." John was hanging on his words, and Andy felt an echo of that old weight come down on him, the significant honor and duty of striving for the right words for a person in need. "There's plenty to see." He gestured towards Eddie, grinning sharply as he played. "Eddie and I can tell you a couple places to avoid." John smiled at that, relaxed a bit.  
"So why're you hanging around here then?" He asked.  
"John Cox!" They both turned to see Marie standing a few feet away with her hands fisted at her hips. "What'd I tell you 'bout bothering Mister Haldane?" She turned to Andy. "You don't mind him, Andy, I done raised him right, but the boy don't use the good sense God gave him."  
"No, no," Andy said quickly. "It's no bother." Marie scowled at her son, and Andy racked his head to try and recall what John had just asked him. Damn. It had been something about coming home, what it was like to come home. He turned back to John. "The thing no one told me about leaving home is that you can't go back." John stared at him, openly perplexed. "You're a different man when you return, and nothing stood still and waited on you while you were gone. Home becomes an idea that you start trying to search out." Marie and John were both staring at him now, he'd muddled it up somehow. But John nodded and stepped away, glancing back and forth between Andy and his mother.  
"Thanks, Mister Haldane," he said, seeming to mean it.  
"Anytime," Andy answered, and John hopped off the porch, returning to his friends.  
"You come on inside and get yourself something sweet," Marie said, and Andy let her herd him into the house, let himself be enfolded in cheerful conversation.   
Hours later, Andy turned away from a surprisingly heated political debate to find Eddie at his elbow, smiling, his eyes strangely unreadable. "You get enough to eat?" Andy asked. Eddie had done nearly nothing all night besides sit on the porch and play with a rotating cast of musicians.  
"I did," Eddie answered. "Now I'm ready for home." He knocked his boot against Andy's. "Let's go, Skipper."  
"Okay," Andy answered. His stomach fluttered with anticipation.   
It took some time to extract themselves from the gathering, but eventually they were walking side by side back the way they came, boots crunching against frost-coated grass, the light from the Cox farm dimly guiding their way. Andy wanted to say all kinds of things then. _You were born to make music_ and _you were the best thing about leaving home_ and _please let me stay_. "Eddie," he said instead, reaching a hand out and finding his arm in the dark.  
"Wait," Eddie breathed, and the promise in his voice made Andy suddenly dizzy.   
They entered the deeper black of the trees, and Andy had scarcely taken three steps before Eddie's hand was tugging on the edge of his coat, pulling insistently. Andy followed blindly, stumbled, came up against Eddie's body with a punching breath that Eddie swallowed. His mouth opened beneath Andy's, he made a sound in his throat as he shifted in closer. They shoved up against something, Andy's hands scrabbled along rough, flaking bark before finding Eddie's sides. He worked his way up under his coat and shirt, palms running along a strange contrast of skin, roughly webbed there, smooth here, but it was Eddie, all that mattered was that it was Eddie, who cursed and starting rocking his hips against Andy's in a needy, twitching motion, all while their mouths stayed locked together, while Eddie let him kiss him with all the ravenous intent that he'd been holding on to for three long years. But the hunger just kept growing, Andy's world started to tilt and slide away under the exhilarating crush of it. He would disbelieve his own senses, except that nothing his mind could dream up could possibly match the feel of Eddie's mouth, his slick hot tongue, his hard fingers on Andy's hips and shoulder.  
"Jesus," Eddie gasped, shoving him away, keeping a grip on his arm. "Gotta get you home." Then they were making their fumbling, tripping way through the woods, their progress slowed by how they kept stopping to yank each other back in, to touch and kiss and then push away again. Andy would have thrown his head back and laughed, except that would have slowed them down even more.   
Minutes or hours later they pushed through the door and Eddie only paused to snag a jar of grease from the cupboard before hustling Andy up the stairs. There, they shucked their way out of their clothes as quickly as they could with their mouths slotted together. No man should be given everything he wanted, Andy didn't understand how he was supposed to breathe under the squeezing love and gratitude of being given exactly what he wanted, needed. Eddie was perfect, long firm muscles and clever bones beneath. Andy held his face between his hands as he kissed him, seeing him again on the stretcher, swiped his thumbs along his cheeks like he'd wanted to do then. There wasn't a speck of ash or dirt to be found; he was clean and wildly alive in Andy's arms.  
They hadn't talked about anything, there had been no conversation, but Eddie put one hand on Andy's arm and the other flat between his shoulder-blades, and Andy found himself going willingly face down onto the bed, Eddie's chest coming down across his back, dropping biting, panting kisses along his neck. He felt surprisingly calm, despite the fact that he'd never allowed anyone to fuck him before. He'd let them touch him, explore with their fingers and mouths, but never that. But this was Eddie. He trusted Eddie with all of it.   
"Lord," Eddie said, when he eased his first finger inside him, crooked it experimentally. His voice was strangled. "Quantico, huh? I believe it."   
He couldn't tell the truth because if he did then Eddie would stop. Instead he looked over his shoulder at him, hardly discernible in the dark, the only light in the house coming from the low burning fire in the hearth downstairs. "Alright back there, Hillbilly?"  
"Fuck, Andy," Eddie answered, breathless, his finger slowly circling. "Only you would-" he bit himself off, pulled free. Andy listened to him move, and then two greased fingers were pressing in. That was alright, he had done this much before, although it had been further back than Quantico. He focused on Eddie's hard breath, the muted burn fading to nothing under the pleasure of knowing how badly Eddie wanted him like this, the realization that he wanted this too.  
It was strangely exhilarating, being on the other side of it. Andy had always enjoyed the work that came before, the build-up, finding out what his partner liked, what kind of touch, steady or unpredictable, gentle or rough, would please them best. To have that same regard turned on him, to have it be Eddie's long fingers pulling these groans from him, God, it was thrilling. And when Eddie urged him to his knees, when he pushed in with a grunt once Andy had himself braced upright against the windowsill, and then froze when Andy tensed, holding himself still and letting loose a stream of fervent curses against Andy's shoulder, Andy was surprised by the tight clenching of his heart, the burst of feeling that moved through him in response to being cared for, taken carefully. That Eddie was taking such care with him. He was sweating, or maybe they both were; it sat clammy and unpleasant on Andy's skin where they weren't touching, the chill markedly in contrast to the heat they were generating. He also couldn't tell which of them was shaking, they were pressed so close together that it moved them both. He reached back and gripped Eddie's thigh, squeezed gently, trying to help him relax. "Stop," Eddie croaked. "You gotta stop." He reached around and took Andy's dick in his greased hand, gave it one slow firm pump.  
His head fell back on a moan. "Eddie," he said, hoarse, his voice wanting to fall apart on his name. Eddie was tightly drawn behind him, his breath jagged, but he continued to not move, continued to slowly work Andy's cock, his other hand roving over his stomach and chest. Andy turned his head to the side and breathed against Eddie's neck and jaw. "It's alright, Eddie," he said. "I'm alright." Eddie's breath left him in a rush and he dropped his hand to Andy's hip as he slowly pushed the rest of the way in.   
"Hell," he grated out, then gave a short, wild laugh. "This ain't gonna work, I can't fucking-" He stopped, then moved back and forth in one long, loose-hipped thrust. Andy choked on his own ragged breath, his cock jumping in Eddie's hand. Eddie stuttered out something wordless and did it again, stroking his hand along Andy as he did so. It didn't last long after that. If he could feel anything other than Eddie, anything other than this throat-clutching desperation, Andy might have been amused by how quickly Eddie brought him to the edge, how helplessly he went tumbling down, gasping as he came, gripping the sill hard enough to make the wood creak. Eddie worked him through it, then put a hand on Andy's side and another on his shoulder, rocked hard into him, then did it again, and again. His hips snapped forward on the fourth, his head came down against the back of Andy's neck, lips moving soundlessly against the skin there. Andy put his hand over Eddie's where it was gripping his waist and held on to him as best he could.  
They stayed like that for several long, gulping seconds, Eddie collapsed against Andy's back, Andy holding them both up with one hand against the window pane, and then Eddie lifted his head, ran his hand up and down Andy's side. "Okay, Ack-Ack?" He asked, his voice low, his lips ghosting along the edge of his ear. Andy didn't answer, leaning back against him instead, feeling Eddie shift and brace behind him as he took his weight. He was sore, and humming with satisfaction, and pulled apart with sensation. Thank God he'd waited, had always refused before. He couldn't imagine being so breathtakingly intimate with anyone else but Eddie. "Andy?" Eddie said, concerned now, his hand stalling in its track along Andy's skin. Andy cleared his throat.  
"You never disappoint, Hillbilly." He reached back and ran an appreciative hand along Eddie's ass. Eddie dropped his head down against his neck, his breath fanning out warm. He eased Andy down, slid himself slowly free, the both of them groaning softly at the feeling. Then he left the bed, Andy turning on his side to watch his shadowy form disappear down the stairs. He returned a few minutes later with the kerosene lamp and a rag. Andy half-closed his eyes against the light, soft as it was, rolling obediently back to his stomach when Eddie tapped his hip so that Eddie could clean him up. "Always looking after me," he murmured, smiling when Eddie huffed a laugh.  
"Someone's gotta," he said in answer. He stepped away and started moving around the loft. Andy opened his eyes, saw that he was picking up their hastily discarded clothing, trying to set the space to rights.  
"Eddie," he said sternly. He stopped and looked back at him. "As much as I enjoy the sight of you keeping house stark naked, I think that it can wait until morning. Come here."  
His smile flashed, wolfish and crooked, a little unsure. "Yes, Sir," he said, dropping the handful of clothes back to the ground and turning the wick down. The mattress dipped under his weight as he climbed back into bed, another new thing between them, laying close together somewhere besides a hole in the ground. Somewhere safe. Andy started to wind his arm around his waist, but Eddie was stiff, tense and uncomfortable. Perhaps it was all a bit too new; after all, they had never lain close together quite like this. Andy set his hand on Eddie's shoulder instead, kissed him gently, sighing with pleasure when Eddie softened beneath him, his mouth parting. Then he eased back, rolled over on his side so that his back was to him. They didn't touch, but he could still feel Eddie slowly relaxing, sinking into the bed.   
"It was good," Eddie said quietly behind him, pulling Andy back just as his thoughts started to slip away. "Watching you tonight. Seemed like you were having a good time." His knuckles brushed against his back. "You looked happy." Andy closed his eyes again. He hadn't gotten it right, he realized: what he'd told John. Home wasn't an idea, or the memory of an irretrievable place or time. Not for him. Not for years.  
"You did too," he said.


	3. Chapter 3

Eddie blinked awake when Andy shifted in his sleep, his fingers twitching against Eddie's shoulder. He lifted his head, looked up at him. Hell. He'd sprawled out some time during the night, was laying half on top of the man. He could see the mark on Andy's chest where his head had been. Andy was sleeping with that same near-perfect stillness that Eddie had first noted on Guadalcanal. His breathing deep and slow, his face relaxed, expression easy. He had one arm settled along his own stomach and the other curled around Eddie's shoulders. That was the same too, Eddie couldn't count the number of times he'd woken up to Andy's arm around him, propping him up, keeping him close. He hadn't thought much of it back then, except to be annoyed with himself and how much he enjoyed it. Andy was just that sort of man, the sort that wouldn't begrudge a little discomfort on his part if it helped the person next to him rest easy. But looking back, Andy hadn't slept much next to anyone else but him, least not since Gloucester.   
The thought roused that feeling in his chest, that swelling clamor that he couldn't silence. He leaned up slowly on his elbow, Andy's arm falling away, so he could look down on him. He'd think he imagined the whole thing, from the moment Andy put the rag to his ribs and on, if they weren't laying naked together, his cock half-awake and pressed against Andy's hip. It was funny, how it had turned out. When Eddie had allowed himself to imagine it at all, he'd usually pictured it going the other way, Andy fucking him up against a wall, hard and fast, or pressing him down onto a bed and breaking him down nice and slow. But he'd been watching the man all night, talking to one person and then another, engaged and smiling with his eyes, and always looking back to Eddie, checking in on him. All the thoughts that Eddie hadn't let himself linger over had started to congeal into one idea, one want. And Lord, it had been good, and nothing like he'd expected.   
He trailed his hand along Andy's stomach, admiring the view, muscles just this side of heavy, conditioned by years of sport followed by years of hardship. The jut of his hipbones and the narrowing band of muscles leading down to his cock, which Eddie couldn't help but wrap a loose hand around. Andy scarcely moved, his hips shifting slightly. Eddie grinned and slid down the bed.  
"Fuck," Andy said, quietly emphatic, a moment later. Eddie glanced up at him, curled his tongue around the head of his cock. Andy's mouth parted and he sucked in a shuddering breath. He was making small rolling motions with his hips, fighting against the urge to move. Eddie turned his attention back to the task at hand, made free use of every trick he'd picked up over the years, until that iron control broke, and Andy fisted a hand in his hair and drove up into his mouth. His other hand curved around Eddie's jaw, Christ, the man was perfect, one hold hard and the other gentle, his mouth grimly set and his eyes locked with Eddie's. He rocked deep into Eddie's throat and stayed there, grunting low in his chest as he came, and Eddie swallowed him down with practiced ease. "Eddie," he said. "God, you-" he broke off, hauled Eddie up along his body with a bruising grip on his arms. Eddie let him, settled in on top of him and kissed him. It was a losing battle anyway, fighting against loving a man like Andy. It didn't matter that it couldn't last, didn't matter that he wasn't going to be able to come back from it. He hadn't really been free of it before, anyways. "What comes next?" Andy said, murmuring the heavy question against Eddie's cheek. That was too much, he didn't want to think or talk about that, not yet.   
"What do you think?" He replied. "You go feed the chickens and bring us in some eggs while I get the fire going." He'd been trying to sidestep the question, but Andy smiled slow like he'd given him exactly the answer he wanted.  
It ate at Eddie, the pretense of permanency they had somehow stepped into, that they continued to play at as the cold deepened and the winter dragged on. Eddie watched Andy split firewood in February, after Len stopped by one morning and mentioned that he'd be happy to help them find a tree to fell for that purpose. The three of them ended up crunching their way together through the heavy snow until they found a likely one, Len talking them through the process of bringing it down. "Firewood takes half a year to season," Eddie told Andy after Len headed for home. "This won't be no good 'til next winter."  
"It's a good thing Len offered to help us when he did," was all Andy said by way of reply, and Eddie didn't say anything else about it, just helped him saw the tree down to manageable pieces and haul it back home. After all, if this was what Andy needed, it wasn't exactly a hard gift to give. Eddie didn't know what life had been like for him since coming home from the war, but it was clear that Andy thought himself more drastically changed than he was. What the hell did it matter if he lost his train of thought now and then, if he took a little longer to answer than he had before? That was nothing, nothing at all. Andy needed a spell of quiet, needed some time to see that he was just as capable as he had been before, and Eddie could give that to him. But Andy also had a love for people. He wouldn't keep himself buried away up on this hill forever.   
He couldn't believe he'd managed to hold on to the man for the amount of time that he had, as it was. _Six months_ , he thought to himself, late that night, as he steadied Andy with an arm around his back, the two of them rolling their hips together in tandem, Andy palming them both with one hand while he groaned open-mouthed against Eddie's neck. Andy had shown up the end of August, they'd been sharing a bed since December. Time was slipping away from them, this brief escape from life's realities would be ending soon enough. Andy's parents wrote him weekly; he never said much about their content, but Eddie could imagine it well enough.   
"What do you think about keeping bees?" Andy asked one day in March. He had been reading a letter from home, but his head had started paining him and so he'd put it to the side. Now he was sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace, his legs stretched out, leaning back against Eddie's knees.  
"Hell," Eddie answered, running his hands through his hair. It was getting longer, and he kept putting Andy off whenever he mentioned needing another trim. He liked having something to grab a hold of. "Ain't you supposed to be giving that brain of yours a break?"   
"Can't help myself," he replied, lips twitching. "I was speaking with Genevieve Kimble-"  
"-Lady's madder than an outhouse rat-"  
"-and I mentioned the hive living in that half-dead beech tree. She said they swarm in the spring, and that we could move them here if we catch them at it."  
"Don't got a place for 'em," Eddie pointed out.  
"That's easily addressed. We just have to build a box of some sort for them to live in."  
"Pretty sure there's more to it than that." He slid his hands out of his hair, dug his fingers into the muscle running along the back of his neck. Andy dropped his head forward with a soft sigh.  
"I'll stop by the Alt farm tomorrow. Lonnie will know how to build one."  
"Bees," Eddie groused. He fought against a sudden surge of anger; he sure was being left with a helluva lot of work, not to mention painful reminders. By the time Andy was through with him, he wouldn't be able to touch or look at a damn thing on the property without thinking of him. But he wouldn't be staying long once Andy went back home anyhow. The thought helped him keep an even tone. "You'll do as you like, Ack-Ack." Andy pulled on his arm, hand firm and gently insistent, and Eddie leaned over and kissed him, harder than he'd meant to.  
Lonnie not only knew how to build a bee box, he offered to come by and help Andy put it together. Eddie repaired a loose plank on the porch and watched the two of them work. He wouldn't be the only one missing the man when he was gone, small comfort that it was. The whole cove knew Andy by now, viewed him as next to kin. They loved him for his easy warmth, his unaffected manner. The younger ones idolized him and the older ones liked his willingness to work.   
"You gotta be quick," Lonnie was saying to Andy, when Eddie finished up with the porch and wandered over to join them, shooing the rooster away as he went. "They'll be nice and sweet when they first set off, but they'll turn ornery once they start to settle someplace. Get 'em in the box, give 'em a minute to gather up, then put the lid on it and keep it there 'til morning." Andy was frowning and nodding in that new way of his, working hard to take in what Lonnie was telling him. Eddie came to stand beside him. His hand was itching to touch him, let him know he was listening too so he might relax a bit, but he had to settle for standing close enough for their arms to almost brush. Lonnie went on a while longer about the best ways to handle a swarm, how to tell when one was getting ready to take off. Then he wound down, turned his attention to Eddie. "You ain't come round to play, Ed." Lonnie could pick a banjo better than anyone Eddie had ever met, and had thrown a heavy, drunken arm over Eddie's shoulders at Howard's party, told him to drop in any time he felt like making some noise.  
"You convince Ossie to hand his guitar over for the night, I'll be there," Eddie said.  
"Shit," was all Lonnie replied. "Anyways, you boys've got your work cut out for you, but you making a good start. Bees'll have everything growing better, and Rose always saying they make a sweeter tune than any music man can produce." He looked around the yard, nodded approvingly. "Yep. It's a start."  
_A start to what?_ Eddie wanted to say, annoyed with the way Andy smiled and clapped Lonnie on the shoulder. They weren't goddamn homesteading out here, if that was what Lonnie thought. Lord, that was probably exactly what he thought, what they all thought. Two chewed up, injured marines who didn't have any other place to go, that was what they saw. Well, Eddie was just fine, no matter the tallish tale he'd fed Len to stop him from throwing his daughters in his face. He didn't need this damn place, he'd land on his feet when he left, like he always had. And Andy was the same as he ever was, bound for something shining and good, something far away from here.  
"Goats," Andy said the next morning, closing the almanac and tapping the cover decisively. Eddie hummed and drank his coffee, smiling despite himself. The man was going to be the death of him. "I'm gravely serious here, Lieutenant," Andy said, warm-eyed, lips holding a straight line.  
"You don't gotta sell me on goats, Ack-Ack, I've kept 'em before."  
"Have you?" Andy leaned forward, propping his forearms on the table. "You've never mentioned it."  
"What was there to mention? Not much call to discuss livestock over there."  
"No," Andy answered slowly. He reached out and took Eddie's hand, ran his thumb along his knuckles, staring down at their joined hands with that lost expression in his eyes. Eddie waited, knew by this point that it was just how Andy organized his thoughts before speaking. "You could tell me now," he said eventually. "Maybe I haven't been clear. I want to know everything about you, Eddie. There's more to the both of us than what we knew about each other over there." He brought Eddie's hand to his mouth and kissed it; Eddie couldn't stand the skittering feeling the soft press of his lips started in his chest. "I'm greedy for you," he said, lifting his eyes up to look at Eddie.  
There wasn't anything else to do but squeeze back, hold on. "Me too," Eddie said gruffly. His throat felt all shuttered, and it didn't help when Andy's eyes heated with feeling, when he bent his head down to kiss Eddie's fingers again, more intently this time. Eddie turned his gaze down to the mug of coffee in front of him, stared hard at it until he felt a little steadier. "They don't eat any old thing, like you townies seem to think," he said eventually, looking back up, grinning at Andy's perplexed expression. "Goats," he clarified, nodding towards the almanac. "Gonna have to plant some hayseed."  
"Guess I'm running to the store," Andy said. But he stayed where he was, kept his hold on Eddie's hand.  
_Maybe I'll stay_ , Eddie thought, as he and Andy fought to turn the earth the next morning, each foot of worked soil hard won. It had warmed up some, but the ground was still packed stiff from the long winter, fighting against their shovels. He was sinking too much sweat and effort into the place to up and go at this point. Besides, Andy wouldn't know where to find him if Eddie left. Just because the man would have to return to his life eventually, that didn't mean he couldn't get back out this way now and then. Maybe it would become a regular thing between them, Andy coming out to visit a couple times a year. There would be a lot of lonely nights in between, but that was just the price their sort paid. He could live with that. Eddie stopped and propped his foot on his shovel, looking up the slope towards the house. It would please his ma and sister to know he'd decided to settle in somewhere, they were always on him about his wandering ways. He doubted he'd manage to do anything other than break even on the place, but what did he want money for, anyways? He didn't need much, never had.  
"Slacking on detail?" Andy said, coming to stand beside him. He nudged his shoulder against Eddie's, didn't quite manage to hide his surprise when Eddie leaned against him.  
"Caught me, Skip. Gonna call me up for captain's mast?"  
"No need," Andy answered smoothly. "I think an arrest in quarters will suffice as punishment."  
"Quarters, huh? Suppose I got a good idea what you mean by quarters."  
"You always were clever, Hillbilly. Get in the house." Goddamn but he liked it when Andy took that tone with him. Eddie hopped to obey, Andy following close on his heels, and they'd scarcely closed the door behind them before Andy had him backed up against the sink, one hand on the juncture of his neck and shoulder, the other working him free of his pants. They never did make it out of the kitchen. So really it was their own fault that the hayseed didn't get sown until the next afternoon. Eddie stood back and watched Andy pace up and down the length of the tilled earth, amused and warmed through by the look of deep satisfaction on his face.  
"You know," he drawled, "Hay's gotta get cut regular, and stored up high somewhere to dry." Andy stopped pacing, looked over at him with dawning dismay. "So I guess you're building us a hay shed."  
"Damn," Andy said with a laugh, folding his arms and looking down at the freshly seeded bed. Eddie whistled jauntily as he turned away, heading back to the house to make them some supper. If he was going to be taking care of this place on his own, he might as well wring some work out of Andy in the meantime.   
But the next day found Eddie digging holes by himself, Andy having gone to post some letters for them both. He didn't mind: it was just airish enough for him to be warmed by his own efforts, and the job was easily tackled alone. Andy showed up just in time to help him set the posts. He lifted a hand as he came across the yard, but made straight for the house, disappearing inside. Eddie frowned to himself, gave him a couple of minutes, then left his work and followed after him.  
He found Andy sitting on the couch, still in his coat. He had a stack of envelopes in his hand, and was flipping slowly through them, looking carefully at the face of each one. His jaw was set tight, working back and forth with his distress. Eddie came to stand beside him, set his hands at his side and waited.  
"My mother said she'd been holding on to them, thinking she would give them to me to address when I got back," he said, not looking up. "They've been arriving since last year. Since the war ended, I suppose." He looked up at Eddie then, his eyes pained. "Letters from some of the men."  
"Be good to hear from them," Eddie said neutrally, watching him. "See how they're doing."  
"Some of these have gone close to half a year without a reply, Eddie. God, why didn't she," he cut himself off, braced his hand briefly against his forehead. "It's my own fault."  
"Hey." He reached out, ran a hand along his shoulders. "Quit that. Nothing to be done about that now. Just gotta write them back." Andy didn't answer, went back to flipping through the letters. Eddie knew he was counting them, trying to gauge how old each one was, trying to discern each boy's state of mind by the quality of their penmanship. He gave his shoulder a shake. "Give 'em here." Andy handed them over, and Eddie took the stack and settled down at the table. "Make us some coffee. I'll get 'em sorted, and we'll take it one at a time." He didn't wait on Andy to agree to anything, just started opening envelopes and marking the dates.   
It didn't take more than a moment for Andy to rise from the couch and join him in the kitchen. He stopped for a moment beside Eddie, stooped over him and pressed his lips against the back of his neck, his breath gusting out heavy along his skin. Eddie fought against a shiver and kept to his task. "Gimme your coat," Andy murmured, and Eddie stopped long enough to shrug out of it. He watched Andy out the corner of his eye, watched him hang both their coats by the door, then turn to the stove and start the coffee.  
That night, Andy gave him the longest, most fever-inducing blow job of his life.   
"Jesus, Andy, c'mon," Eddie gasped, thrusting up after Andy's mouth as he pulled off again. Andy put an implacable hand to his hip and held him down.   
"Not yet," he muttered, his lips just barely brushing along the side of Eddie's dick. Even that was enough to make him groan, he was so worked up, had been hovering on the edge for what felt like forever.  
"Putting the screws to me," he grated out, reaching to touch himself, but Andy got him by the wrist and trapped his hand. There was a swelter beneath his skin, a drumbeat in his chest.   
"You're stunning, you know that?" Andy said in answer. Then he went back to pulling Eddie apart, and by the time he finally relented and sank his mouth down with intent, Eddie wasn't anything but one sparking, writhing nerve, coming with a hoarse shout and jerking hips. Afterwards, Andy slid in next to him on the bed, urging him onto his side so that he could settle behind him, his arm wrapped around his ribs. It was obvious, pressed close together like they were, that he hadn't gotten off, and Eddie would normally be inclined to do something about it, but Lord, he was so wrung out he could scarcely move. But he patted Andy's side halfheartedly, a question. "No, no," Andy said, running his hand along Eddie's stomach soothingly. "I like this." Eddie was exhausted, bone tired in the best way possible, but he was alert enough to pick up Andy's voice, soft as it was, when he spoke again a moment later. "Couldn't do it without you, Eddie. Any of it."  
It took a moment to gather himself, to think what to say. "Bullshit," he said, rolling over. He got a firm hold on Andy's jaw, scraped his thumb along the stubble there. "You'd of done exactly what needed to be done, with or without me." He waited for a response, but Andy didn't speak again, just sighed and pulled Eddie in close.

* * *

  
"Well, ain't this a sight." Andy looked up to see Genevieve Kimble standing on the other side of the half built fence. "I like watching a man bent to his work," she said with something next to a leer, propping her elbows up on the top slat. He would have been taken aback if it had come from any other woman than Genevieve, who was old enough to be his grandmother, and was a mad witch besides, according to Eddie. She had a strange amount of clout among the people of the valley, respected and feared in equal measure. But Andy liked her, suspected she might be the cleverest woman he'd ever met.  
"Genevieve." He dropped his mallet, rose and came to stand beside her on the other side of the fence. "What can I do for you?"  
"Mmph," she said in reply. "Don't want nothing from you. Felt like taking a walk and my feet took me here."  
"Come inside and have some coffee."  
"I'll take it on the porch," she said, turning away and heading towards the house. Andy followed after her, amused and trying to hide it. He left her standing on the porch, went inside and poured them both a mug. When he returned, she had settled herself onto the bench Eddie had made, had removed her hat and pulled a cob pipe out from somewhere on her person. She accepted the mug of coffee with a grunt, took a sip and then set it beside her hat in order to focus on her pipe. Andy leaned against the rail and watched her. "Well, Andy," she said, after taking a few puffs. "What're your intentions?"  
"In regards to what?"  
"My cove," she replied, shooting him a keenly disappointed glance. "This little homestead. You planning on sticking it out, or you just passing through on your way somewhere else?"  
"I like it here," he replied carefully, after a long moment. "Very much." Whether or not he would stay depended on Eddie, but he certainly couldn't tell her that.   
"Course you like it. You ain't stupid, are ya?" She nodded firmly, as if he had answered her. "Anyone with a lick of sense would like it here. Trouble is, there's hardly any sense left in the world." She lipped her pipe, stared out towards the trees. Spring was upon them, the nights still cold but the days perfect, abundant in sunlight, abundant in every aspect from what Andy had seen so far. Eddie had been working nearly every day in the garden, expanding the beds, pouring through the almanac that he'd largely ignored ever since Andy brought it home. He'd started coming into town more often with Andy, talking local crop markets with Ralph and Howard.   
"Gotta keep a hand in as many different pots as I can manage," he'd said one night to Andy, sitting at the kitchen table and scratching out numbers. "Can't stake too much on to any one line. That's how the Stump place went under." He slanted a grin towards Andy, standing at the stove and struggling with dinner. "Gonna need you to get moving on that goat pen."  
"This place needs strong backs and young blood, if we gonna keep on." Andy refocused on Genevieve. She was looking at him now, her gaze shrewd. "Needs more folk like you and Ed. Be best if the both of you got married, chose youselves a girl and got some children on her, but everyone knows thanks to Len and his flapping lip that Ed got his pecker blown off in the war. But you." She cocked her head at Andy, something mocking in her face. "What would it take to get you to settle here with one of our girls, put down some roots?"  
Andy had the sense that he was in over his head. He'd never enjoyed veiled talk, even before his injury, and he certainly didn't have the mental wherewithal for it these days. There was a strange light in Genevieve's eyes, not antagonistic precisely, but sharp, far too sharp, as if she already knew.  
As if she knew.  
"I'm afraid I'm not fit for the company of a good woman," he answered steadily, refusing to look away or fold under her gaze.  
"How's that?" She said, quick as a snapping branch. "Look hale 'nough to me." She didn't blink, her eyes intent on him. "Better get you a good reason, make sure it'll stick. Lotta mommas in this cove looking to keep their girls close to home. They give up on Ed, but here you come, strong and fit and good-looking to boot, loyal too, what to make your way out here on account of your friendship with Jones."  
She was speaking too quickly, Andy couldn't keep up. He stared down at his hands and struggled to sift through it all. He'd already lost half of what she'd said, the words and their meaning sliding away, but he got the sense she was trying to warn him, help him. It was true that he had been foolhardy, staying so long with Eddie. So far they had managed to avoid suspicion, but that couldn't go on forever. If he wanted to stay, he would have to come up with a reason to continue living with Eddie, a reason why the young women of the valley should look elsewhere for a husband, but he didn't know if he was capable of thinking up a lie of that magnitude, not to mention maintaining it. God, some days it felt like he could hardly think at all.  
"How about a head wound?" He said, shocking himself. Genevieve barked a laugh.  
"Shit, didn't I say something you could stick with? Ain't like Ed and his missing bits, no one'd ask him to pull his pants down and show 'em the proof. Head wound's a whole 'nother thing."  
"It's easy enough to stick with the truth," he answered, and struggled to keep a sober expression when she looked at him in surprise. "I have a head wound." He wanted to laugh, wanted Eddie by his side so he could kiss him. Christ, what a thought. It was enough to renew a man's faith in God, the idea that his injury could have a part in helping him win a future with the man he loved. Genevieve stood up from the bench.  
"Show it to me," she said, her voice a challenge. Andy bent his head obediently, indicating the spot, stared down at their feet as Genevieve inspected his head. "Huh," she said, when she found the scar. "Well I'll be damned."  
"It's doesn't trouble me much-" Andy started to say.  
"-But sometimes it sends you into fits," Genevieve cut in decisively. She stepped back and Andy raised his head. He started to speak, but she went on, lifting a hand to forestall him. "Takes ya to the floor, locks up your limbs. And you coming outta it all fogged up and mean, needing a couple hours to come back to youself." She was staring hard at him again.  
"So I'm told," he answered slowly. "I don't remember it when it happens."   
"Mmph," she said, turning around and picking up her pipe. She came to stand beside Andy, tapped it out against the rail. "'Preciate you being honest with me, Andy. It's a good man who'd choose a solitary sorta life for himself, spare a wife the burden of looking after him." She stuck her pipe in her pocket. "I'll make sure the momma's know to cast their eyes elsewhere."  
Maybe God didn't have a thing to do with it. Maybe it was his faith in humanity that should be renewed, all his gratitude given to the lucky chance of meeting souls with open hearts and minds. Andy reached out, took Genevieve's hand in his. She tensed up, but didn't pull away. Her hand was rough, the knuckles swollen, a woman who'd worked all her life and whose work wasn't done yet. "Thank you, Genevieve."  
"You don't thank me," she answered brusquely, pulling her hand away. "I ain't doing it for you. This cove needs young blood." She turned back to the bench, picked her hat up and settled it on her head. "Having you and Ed here is good for the children, makes 'em think again 'bout leaving or staying." She looked at him, graced him for the first time with a small, fleeting smile. "Happy to take you as you are, the both of ya."  
"Eddie was right," he said. "You are a witch." She threw back her head and cackled at that, as he'd thought she might.  
"He better keep them clever thoughts of his up on this hill, don't go bringing them around where I might hear 'em again." She stepped down off the porch and started making her way across the yard. "You tell him I got my good eye on him. He don't want the bad one." Andy watched her go, shaking his head in stunned relief as he reviewed their conversation. Then he left the porch as well, returned to his work.  
That evening, he and Eddie worked together to string wire around the goat pen. They didn't speak except for the odd, "Hold that line tighter," or the occasional curse if the wire slipped. There was something expectant in the air between them, or maybe that was just Andy, still recovering from him astounding conversation with Genevieve, his thoughts moving forward, further ahead than he'd been able to contemplate up to this point. They finished just as the light left them, leaned together along the gate, elbows bumping companionably. They were safe enough here, at home and under cover of the looming dark, for Andy to dare to take Eddie's hand. Eddie let him, twisted their fingers together and hummed softly as he propped his jaw on his fist and scanned the pen.  
"I think I'm overdue for a trip home," Andy said carefully, watching him. Eddie stopped humming. "My father's close to driving out here himself to get some answers from me. I need to go back, talk to them in person." He tried for a light tone. "I imagine I've borrowed their car for long enough; they'd probably like that back, too."   
"Talk to them about what." Eddie's voice was horribly flat, jarring in contrast to his typical sharp lilt.   
"About my plans for the future," Andy said. He felt an odd urge to get down on his knees, suddenly understood the sentiment. "About us, I suppose."  
"Us?" Eddie pulled his hand free, turned to face him. "Andy. Don't tell me you're-" He cut himself off, stepped away with a jerky shake of his head. "Lord. You are, you're thinking 'bout staying out here." He said it like an accusation, like he had caught Andy out at something shameful.  
"Yes, I've thought about it." Could Eddie actually be surprised to hear it? "Haven't you thought about it?"  
"No!" Eddie said, his voice raising up close to a shout. "No, I haven't been goddamn thinking about it. You ain't staying here, I don't want you staying here." He glared at Andy, his face set. Andy was careful to not react, to hold himself still. Reminded himself to breathe, gave himself a minute to let the pain subside.  
"You want me to leave," he said, once he was able to get a handle on his voice.  
"Fuck, Ack-Ack," Eddie said, lifting a hand and burying it in his own hair. He looked wildly around the yard. "Let's go inside." He didn't wait on Andy, just started making his way up the hill towards the house with that long loping stride of his. A perfectly free creature, only half understood. Andy followed after him.  
Inside, Eddie paced over to the table and lit the lamp. He turned around with a set lip, fixed Andy with a gimlet eye. "You're right, Skipper. It's time you went home." Andy didn't speak, set his back against the door and folded his arms. He was rattled, but not by Eddie's words. It was the expression in his eyes, alarmingly similar to the look he'd had back on Peleliu, making his report to Andy about the screaming boy, the nightmare. His eyes had been hollow points, blankly blue. Andy had never seen him look like that before, and had vowed to himself that he would do everything in his power to see to it that Eddie never looked like that again. But here they were, treading far too close to that same expression. He'd been silent too long; Eddie shook his head and looked away from him. "Thought you just needed some time. Didn't think you'd go and decide to bury yourself out here."  
"What do you mean by that?"   
"You used to say you were gonna go back to Bowdoin. Said you'd like to make it through at least one season. What happened to that?"  
_You. The war. A length of ruptured steel_. He didn't know what to say, didn't know where he would stop if he ever started. But Eddie was already moving on, he had only paused to give Andy time to absorb his words.  
"You think you're not fit for it anymore, don't you? Think you ain't suited for nothing else besides this."  
"No," he said quickly. "No, that's not." Not entirely true. Eddie nodded sharply when he trailed off, his lips pulling tighter. He walked up to Andy, moving in close, his hand coming up to grip him by his elbow.  
"You listen to me, Andy." He waited a moment before speaking again, slowly and evenly. "Maybe you can't see it, but I do. It didn't break you, understand? That life you wanted, that football season and whatever you were hoping would come after? You can still get that."  
God, it was crippling, this twisting pull that kept dragging him forward. "Eddie." He slid his hand up Eddie's shirt, ran it along the dip where the bullet went in, up towards his heart. "Tell me you don't want this." Eddie's face crumpled, he wrenched away.  
"Jesus, Andy, you ain't fucking hearing me."  
"I am." He hadn't said it; Andy held on to that. "You believe I'm here because I don't think I can cut it anywhere else. And you're right." Eddie looked at him, and Andy gathered his courage, ran headlong into the fire. "I'm in love with you, Eddie." His face closed up, a book snapping shut. Andy looked away, fought to extract the words he wanted to say. "Everything means more when it's happening with you. No man would turn away from that, if he was lucky enough to have found it in the first place."  
"You don't belong here," Eddie said harshly. "You're supposed to be with goddamn people."  
"There are people here," Andy countered. "People I've grown to like. People who could use our help."  
"War's over, Ack-Ack. Ain't your job to look after folk anymore." Andy stood stunned by the force of it for a moment, the sudden hot, heavy anger rising up in him, like he'd never felt directed towards Eddie before.   
"You can go to hell," he said, coldly furious. Eddie's head snapped back, his shoulders straightening. "We all took up burdens during the war, but that was never one of them." God, it had been the only thing that mattered, and for Eddie to throw it in his face like a backhanded blow was too much. Andy turned, fighting against a swelling need for violent action, something tangible to pit himself against, and then Eddie's hand came down on his arm.  
"Andy, wait," he said. "Shit, I'm sorry. I don't mean that." Andy gave himself a moment to calm, to pull it all in and let it go, then turned back around, meeting Eddie's worried gaze.  
"I want this, Eddie," he said, holding himself steady. "What do you want?" Eddie stared at him, his brow furrowed in thought. Andy's heart was tripping on the balance, waiting to know which way to fall.  
"I want you to go back home," Eddie finally said. Andy would have despaired at that, but Eddie's hand had slipped from his shoulder, slid along his arm to take hold of him by his wrist. "Spend some time with your folks, your family. Go up and visit Bowdoin, talk to your old coach. I want you to think about what you want, what you really want."  
"And if I decide I want to come back here?" Eddie didn't answer, just shook his head and dropped his face down against Andy's neck. But he had always said plenty with his silences.

* * *

  
In April Andy tossed his suitcase in the back seat and turned to face him. "Well," he said, his lips twitching up in an attempt at a smile. But it never came close to his eyes. "Well," he said again, more heavily this time.  
"Sooner you hit the road, sooner you'll get home," Eddie said firmly, every other word he could speak locked away in his chest. Andy looked down at his boots, his jaw working. He looked towards the house, the yard. He looked back at Eddie.  
"I don't know what to say to you, except that I love you," he said, his voice low, hoarse with sincerity.   
_Jesus Christ, I love you too_. Eddie wanted to cup his face, kiss him, wanted to pull him back into the house and fuck him again, mark him up so that Andy would have to carry the bruises around with him for weeks. "You remember what you promised me, Skip." Andy nodded once, his gaze level. He shifted his weight, then eased himself into the car. Eddie's mind scrambled, his heart jittered. Maybe the last time he would ever see him, and he couldn't say a goddamn word, couldn't speak. Andy's hand moved to pull the door closed, and Eddie stepped in to stop him. _Fuck_ , he thought, as he bent himself nearly in half to take Andy by the back of the neck, to kiss him one last time. _You aren't coming back_. Andy reached up and got a hold of him by his shirt, kissed him back just as desperately, demandingly. There wasn't anything tender in it, like they had been with each other the night before; only sharp scraping teeth and hard lips. Eddie had to wrench himself free, groped for the door of the car and shut it more forcefully than he'd intended. He stepped back, thinking he'd stand and watch Andy drive off, but God, he didn't know what he might show on his face if he did that, so he turned on his heel instead and forced himself to walk at a steady pace back to the house. He closed the door behind him and leaned against it so he could listen to the sound of the car starting up, driving away.  
In May he walked over to the Alt farm, so he could hitch a ride with Lonnie to see a farmer about some goats. The man greeted them with a firm handshake, then walked them through his barn with obvious pride, stopping in front of the gate and gesturing in.  
"You's got a good set on ya," he said to Eddie. "Folk don't 'preciate the creatures like they should. Each one of my girls give a gallon a day, and what with killing the males for meat, you can live off 'em real good."   
"Pretty," Eddie said, because they were, cream-colored and decently larger than the ornery, clever things Eddie's folks had kept for a time. And he wasn't the smart one: that had been Andy. There wasn't much of a market for goat milk or meat, but Andy hadn't been thinking about making money off of them, at least not yet, and Eddie wasn't either. It was just for them at this point. Well. Just for him, now.  
"Sweet too," the farmer said in agreement. "Least, the does are." He gestured to one of them. "This 'un'd be a good start. Just weaned her off her first kids, one buck and one doe. Sell you her, and her two kids."  
"Chancey," Lonnie said, and the man scowled.  
"Ain't chancey, I'm telling you they're quality," he said, leaning out to spit. He looked back over at Eddie. "You need to breed 'em again in the fall, you bring 'em back here, we'll work something out."  
A doe like that, already a proven breeder and producer, would cost a pretty penny by herself. Add her kids on top of that, and it was enough money sunk into one venture to give Eddie pause. But it was fresh milk, and enough of it for him to sell in town. He thought about Andy and how he'd sighed quietly when they finished the pen, how he'd stretched his arms over his head and then set them alongside Eddie's as they looked the work over.  
"How much?" He said.  
"When you expecting Andy back?" Lonnie asked him on their way back, the goats loaded in the bed and bleating unhappily as they bumped along.   
"Dunno," Eddie answered, proud of how lightly he answered. "Suppose it depends on how he's finding things back home." Lonnie grunted, and didn't ask him anything else.  
"Here y'go, lady," Eddie said, nudging the doe and her two kids into their pen. "New quarters." He'd made the first hay cutting a few days back, and he watched as the girl wandered over and lifted her head to take a nibble. He turned around and leaned against the post so he could look up the hill, look the land and the house over.  
He supposed he was homesteading in truth now. The vegetable beds were sprawling, one corner set aside for his own table and the rest carefully planned and planted to sell. The chickens were living fat and easy, the wheat was up to his waist. Eddie tried to imagine spending out the rest of his years here, possibly alone. Most likely alone. It wouldn't be so bad. He liked this cove, these people. Andy had been right about that too. He thought about his ma and sister coming out to see him; May would marry eventually, and then maybe there would be some children running around underfoot, nieces and nephews for Eddie to entertain. They'd be hanging from the rafters, but hell, it was something to look forward to. He would always be thankful to Andy for that, among countless other things; that he'd come out here and shown Eddie that there was something else for him besides wandering. Eddie hummed, decided to treat himself to a ramble in the woods, hunt up some ramps, maybe some mushrooms. Couldn't stop wandering entirely, after all.  
In June it got too hot to work in comfort all day outdoors, but Eddie liked to think he'd learned a little more tolerance than most, what with some of the mad heat they'd had to suffer through in the Pacific. Or maybe he was just a vain son of a bitch, and still couldn't stand to walk around bare-chested when someone might happen upon him and see those ugly scars. It wasn't like Andy was here anymore, to touch him there like it was nothing, or rather, like it was something so rare and meaningful that it didn't feel ugly at all. So Eddie kept his shirt stubbornly on and buttoned, and made sure to stake the goats out somewhere shady each day.   
He took them a little ways into the treeline, and was just looking about for the best spot to set the stake, when a low, vibrating hum caught his ear. Eddie stopped and looked around, frowning. For a minute he didn't understand what was happening, and then he spotted it, a swarm of bees, moving in a black, writhing mass along a low hanging branch.  
"Well, shit," he said out loud, standing and staring, while the goats bleated and bumped rudely against his legs. He'd forgotten all about that hive, despite the bee box sitting on the back side of the house. He wasn't inclined to bother with them, truth be told, honey was all well and good but he wasn't particularly interested in tending to them, but _Andy will want those bees_. The thought hurt, squeezed like a hand closing around his throat. Seemed like he couldn't shut that voice up, no matter how many times he tried to tell it that the man wasn't coming back. "Hell," he said, then looked down at the doe. "Let's go, sweetheart. Back to the pen." They obeyed only grudgingly, Eddie moving them along as quickly as he could. Once they were secured, he grabbed the top box and hustled back. He set it beneath the swarm, circled around the branch warily. Lonnie had said they'd be easily handled as long as he didn't waste any time, so what they hell was he waiting for? Hadn't he done more than one beach landing, taken more than one airfield? He rolled his shoulders, reached out and shook the branch.   
The humming intensified, the moving, shifting mass seemed to coil in and out like one living thing, and then it started dropping off the branch, falling in clumps into the box below. They buzzed tightly around Eddie too; he felt a sting on his hand, his arm, but mostly he was shocked by how little they bothered him, landing all along his arms and shoulders and then alighting again. He stepped back from the branch and gave them a couple of minutes to regroup, come back together in the box. Then he set the lid on top and stepped away. He clasped his hands behind his back and stared down at the box, listening intently. Now that they had settled a bit, now that there was a sturdy wooden lid between them, he decided he liked their humming. It was surprisingly low, hitting the ear just so, soothing. Musical. _Andy_ , he thought, helpless against the shaky smile he felt growing on his face, the warm weight of love like a hand coming down on his shoulder  
He slept with all the windows open in July, so that the sultry wind could move through the house, not enough to cut the heat any, but a small pleasure, a soft whoosh of motion. But it did mean that he could hear that evil rooster, clear as day, when he crowed too early in the morning, when the sun had scarcely started to gray the sky. _I'm gonna kill that damn bird_ , he thought to himself, and then he heard the sound of a car coming up the track.   
He forced himself to lay still, not lift up to look out the window. They faced the wrong way anyways, he'd have to lean himself halfway out to be able to see who it was. He stayed as he was, waited. He heard the sound of a door closing, the faint sound of boots coming up the stairs and crossing the porch. They were walking slowly, each tread a shot to the gut. He heard the door open, then shut.  
Even then he held himself to the bed, sprawled out on his stomach, eyes open and fixed on the wall. Just because he came back, that still didn't necessarily mean what Eddie wanted it to, couldn't help wanting. Andy was the sort of man who'd drive hundreds of miles to deliver a hard truth, give it to him face to face. He'd never taken the easy way out of anything. He listened to him move across the kitchen, start making his way up the stairs. He'd promised him he'd think about it, promised he'd think about more than just the two of them. Andy wouldn't break his word, and more than that, he wouldn't lie to Eddie. There was the sound of something heavy being set down, and then it came again. More than one suitcase. Eddie felt his stomach flip with nerves and hope. A few steps more, and Andy's weight came down on the edge of the bed, his hand came down on Eddie's back. Eddie rolled over, looked up at him. He'd cut his hair. He was looking at Eddie with all the warmth and light of the world.   
Fuck it.  
"I love you," Eddie tried to say, but Andy leaned in and kissed him before he could get it all out. Eddie grabbed him by his shoulder and the collar of his shirt and pulled him down on top of him, Lord, he'd missed this, missed him. "Get them dirty boots off the bed," he muttered against Andy's mouth, and Andy huffed a laugh and kicked them off, then got back to kissing him in that way of his, swallowing him up one bite at a time, until Eddie was reeling from it, until he was pared down to just a twisting wire of licking heat and need.   
"God," Andy said, dragging his lips and teeth along Eddie's throat. "Say you want me to stay."  
"What the hell do you think?" Eddie said, fumbling between them to flip open the button of Andy's pants, but Andy pulled back, his mouth twisting. Eddie stopped, took him by his jaw. "Stay here with me." He couldn't help the harshness of his own voice, didn't know why everything he wanted to say seemed to come out so hard and offish. But Andy just moaned with something like relief and dropped his head against his chest. And when he shifted his hand down to Eddie's thigh, urged his leg up around his hip, his lips writing out a question along his collarbone, Eddie rolled up against him and gasped out a, "Yes, Ack-Ack, yes." And when, finally, he pushed his way inside in agonizing increments, when he held still for a moment and then canted his hips and started to move, it was exactly what Eddie had thought it would be, Andy's fingers digging in hard against his side, his other hand gentle as he held him by the back of his neck and muttered little broken things against his ear. He set a slow, hard pace, the heat closing in on them both and making the sweat pop out and roll in rivulets along their bodies. He didn't even need to touch Eddie to make him come; the perfect drag and thrust of his pitching hips coupled with the friction of his stomach rubbing along Eddie's dick had Eddie clutching on to him and nearly choking as everything gathered and coiled in his spine and stomach, then fell free.  
Afterwards they lay together just as they were, heedless of the mess between their bodies, the sunlight streaming in through the window on them now, increasing the heat. Eddie needed to get up, see to the animals, the beds. He stayed where he was, running his hands along Andy's slick warm back. "Love you," he said again.   
"Thank God," Andy said sincerely. He lifted his head, leaned up and kissed him. "I brought you something," he said after a moment, pulling back. "A guitar."  
"Shit," Eddie said, dropping his head back against the mattress. "Already said I loved you, what else do you want from me?"  
"I want you to play it," Andy answered, smiling with his eyes.  
So they got up, got themselves cleaned off and dressed. The work couldn't wait, so Eddie went to tend the goats and chickens and sent Andy off to weed and check over the beds. It was late afternoon by the time they were able to take a moment, and they went inside and ate cold beans and greens, standing side by side in front of the sink. Then Eddie poured them both a tall glass of water and rye, and they moved out to the porch because it was too damn hot to be lingering inside. Eddie sat in the chair and started going over the guitar, tuning it and testing its sound. "You did good, Captain," he said approvingly to Andy.   
"I should hope so," Andy said, settling onto the bench and leaning down to grab Eddie by his ankles. He put his feet in his lap, dug his thumbs into his heel. Eddie grunted with pleasure. It was a little risky, but an easily corrected position if they happened to hear someone coming. "I think the man I bought it from was ready to toss me out on my ear by the time I made up my mind on it." Eddie grinned and started picking out a tune. "I know this one," Andy said, working his way up towards the arch of Eddie's foot. "Shenandoah."  
"You got it. You know this part?" His wasn't much for singing, but he cleared his throat and gave it a go. "At last there came a Yankee skipper, away you rolling river."  
"No," Andy said, his eyes crinkling, lips quirking up.  
"God's truth," Eddie said, then went back to humming along as he played.  
They stayed like that, in contented quiet for several long minutes, Andy kneading Eddie's feet and calves, only stopping to take the occasional sip of his drink. Eddie didn't know what more a man could want for, other than a home and a loving touch and a little music to make it all slide into sweetness.  
"I visited Bowdoin," Andy said eventually. "Ended up spending a couple weeks there actually, catching up with friends." He grimaced lightly. "They threw a party for me."  
"Offer you back that coaching position?" Andy gave him a deliberately even look.  
"Yes," he answered simply. Eddie looked back down at the guitar. He had a suspicion Andy hadn't given the decision the weight he should have, but he was done with doubting the man. Andy knew his own mind, after all, and always had. Sometimes you just had to have faith in the person beside you. "But that's not why I ended up staying so long," Andy continued. "I had several interesting conversations with an old professor of mine and a few of his colleagues. They share your opinion, that diversifying will be key if the people in this region want to start reversing their fortunes." He wrapped a warm hand around Eddie's ankle, looked out thoughtfully towards the garden. "It'll take more than just the two of us. We'll all have to rise or fall together."  
"Just how you like it," Eddie said, and Andy looked back over at him, smiled.  
"What are your thoughts on sheep?" He asked.  
"Hell, Andy. Why stop there, why not get us a couple of pigs while we're at it?" It was supposed to be a joke, but Andy's jaw flexed as he chewed it over.  
"What does pig farming entail, exactly?"  
Now he'd done it. "Let's get back to sheep," Eddie said, changing to another tune. Andy took a moment to redirect.  
"I don't know how profitable they'll be in the long-term, but wool is in high demand right now. We wouldn't produce enough to attract any of the larger buyers, but there's a mid-level market for it."  
"Sheep need pastureland," Eddie pointed out.  
"We have more than ten acres," Andy answered. "Seems like space enough for a pasture or two."  
We. Eddie liked that, it suddenly sounded just right, the perfect note. The bees humming in the background, trees rustling, the whole hill seeming to gather up the different sounds of home. And them at the center of it, strumming the strings.  
"Guess you're building another fence," he said, grinning, carried along by its vibrations.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading!


End file.
